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THE CODE-SWITCHING BEHAVIOR OF THREE

MANDARIN-ENGLISH SPEAKING CHILDREN
BY
HUI-TZU MIN
B.A., National Taiwan Normal University, 1987
M.A. , University of Illinois at Chicago, 1991
THESIS
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education
in the Graduate College of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997
Urbana,
Illinois
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UMI Number:
9812709
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U N IV E R SIT Y OF IL L IN O IS A T URBANA-CHAM PAIGN
TH E G RAD UA TE COLLEGE
AUGUST 1996
WE HE RE B Y RECOMMEND TH A T T H E T H E S I S BY
H U I-TZU M IN
FVTTTf R n
THE CODE-SWITCHING BEHAVIOR OF THREE MANDARIN-ENGLISH
SPEAKING CHILDREN
BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL F U L F I L L M E N T OF T H E REQUIREMENTS FOR

T H E DEGREE OF_
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
k s*
D irector of T h esis R esearch
H ead o f D epartm ent
Committee on Final Examinationf

irncrson
t Required for d o cto rs d egree but not for master's.
o-3i:
ABSTRACT
This study examines the code-switching behavior of three
Mandarin-English speaking preschool children over a period of
four months across three different settings: home, school and
play group.
Data from audio- and videotaped recordings, on-site
field notes, and a reflective field journal were triangulated

with data from parent and teacher interviews to document the
children's code-switching behavior.
A total of sixteen functions characterized the children's
code-switching.
Analysis of the functions revealed that the
children's code-switching reflected their bilingual communicative

competence rather than first language loss or second language
deficiency.
Their code-switching demonstrated an awareness of
their interlocutors' linguistic backgrounds, reflected their

ethnic and bilingual identity, exhibited their metalinguistic
awareness of the two languages, showed their communicative
competence, and displayed attributes similar to adults' code
switching, such as marking a change in role relationships and
using code-switching for conversational purposes.
The children's code-switching patterns did not reflect their
mothers' code-switching patterns.
Two of the children's mothers
used Mandarin more frequently than intrasentential codeswitching, but their children used intrasentential code-switching
more frequently than Mandarin.
The other child's mother used
intrasentential code-switching more frequently than Mandarin, but
iv
her child used intersentential code-switching more frequently

than intrasentential code-switching.
Other socializing factors,
as well as the children's ability to produce code-switched

utterances and discourse they had not heard before, appeared to
influence their code-switching behavior.
The trio's English proficiency and their code-switching
patterns exhibited a developmental trend. The more English
proficient children code-switched intersententially more
frequently than the less proficient child, who produced more
intrasentential code-switching.
The less proficient child's use
of intrasentential code-switching also showed a developmental

trend.
He progressed from inserting English words into Mandarin
to inserting English formulaic phrases.

Contrary to the researcher's expectation, physical settings
did not emerge as a primary determinant of the children's
language choice.
Further research needs to explore the role of
settings in bilingual children's use of code-switching because

the children in this study tended to associate languages with
participants, and the participants were relatively constant
across the settings.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to extend my profound gratitude to my thesis
committee members, without whose enlightening advice the
accomplishment of this dissertation would not have been possible.
To Professor Georgia Garcia, thesis director,
for her
constant encouragement as a friend and her inspirational guidance

as a mentor.
To Professor Erica McClure, for giving me insight into this
topic through her enthusiastic lectures and for her helpful
comments on data analysis.
To Professor Robert Jimenez, for his insightful input on the
organization and discussion of the findings.
To Professor Arlette Willis, for her helpful suggestions on
the qualitative approach.
In addition,
I would like to thank the focal children's
parents for allowing me to work with their wonderful children,

and Aaron, Darien, and Judith for giving me many pleasurable
hours of observation.
Finally,
I wish to acknowledge my family.
My parents were a
constant solace during the production of this work.
My two sons,
Dan Dan and Hao Hao, were patient enough to endure separation
from their mother for an extended period.
Finally,
I want to
thank my husband, Shih-Wei Chou, without whose continual

spiritual support and provision of child care, the accomplishment
would have virtually been impossible.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1
INTRODUCTION.......................................
Purpose of the Study.............................
Rationale for a Qualitative Research Design.....
Research Questions................................
LITERATURE REVIEW.................................
Definition of Code-Switching
PAGE
and Code-Mixing
11
11
Code-Switching of BilingualAdults................
16
Code-Switching of BilingualChildren..............
30
Code-Switching of Mandarin- and Cantonese-English

Speaking Children ................................
43
Summary...........................................
44
METHODOLOGY.......................................
48
Part ic ipant s ......................................
48
Research Sites....................................
69
Data Collection Procedure........................
72
RESULTS............................................
81
Language Socialization...........................
81
General Functions of the Focal Children's

Code-Switching....................................
101
Characteristics of Each Individual Child's

Code-Switching....................................
153
Influence of Physical Settings...................
165
The Focal Children's English Proficiency and

Their Code-Switching Patterns....................
175
v ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
5
PAGE
SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, AND IMPLICATIONS............
181
Summary...........................................
181
Discussion........................................
182
Implications......................................
212
REFERENCES............................................... 218
APPENDIX
STUDENT OBSERVATION INSTRUMENT FOR RATING
ORAL PROFICIENCY..................................
233
A SCALE FOR RATING CHILDREN'S NATIVE LANGUAGE

PROFICIENCY.......................................
234
CODING OF THE GENERAL FUNCTIONS OF THE CHILDREN'S

CODE-SWITCHING.................................... 236
VITA.....................................................
23 9
1
CHAPTER i
INTRODUCTION
During the past two decades, linguists, anthropologists, and
educators have demonstrated considerable interest in bilinguals'
code-switching, or the juxtaposition of two or more languages
within a single conversation.
Code-switching is a bilingual mode
of communication that is frequently and extensively used among

members of bilingual communities
(Gumperz, 1982; Zentella, 1981).
In fact, some researchers claim that code-switching is a "central

part of bilingual discourse"
(Appel & Muysken,
1987, p. 117) .
According to Kamwangamalu (1985), at least 115 studies have been

published on this topic since 1970.
Why has code-switching attracted so much attention?
Bokamba
(1989) posited three possible answers to this question:

First, CS [code-switching] is fascinating because it is a
newly (re-) discovered phenomenon.
Second, it remains a
mysterious and elusive phenomenon thus far. And third, it
presents a challenge to contemporary linguistic theories
which are largely based on monolingual and monodialectal
data. (p. 277)
Although researchers from various fields have investigated
this topic, the focus of scholarly work primarily has been on
bilingual adults' code-switching behavior (among others, Appel &
Muysken, 1987; Gumperz, 1982; Heller, 1992; Kachru.
1978 & 1982;
Myers-Scotton, 1983 & 1993; Poplack, 1981). Prior to 1980, only a

few researchers in the United States paid serious attention to
the code-switching of bilingual children (see Duran,
1981) . In
subsequent years, there has been an increased interest in the

code-switching behavior of bilingual children (Boeschoten &
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Verhoeven, 1987; Fantini,
1985; Genesee,
1989; Lanza, 1992;
Meisel, 1989 & 1994; Orellana, 1994; Saunders,
1988; Stavans,
1992). Findings from research on children's code-switching have

increased our understanding of the functions of such behavior
(Boeschoten & Verhoeven, 1987; McClure,
1981; Stavans, 1992) and
its role in young children's bilingualism (Fantini, 1985;

Genishi, 1981; Orellana, 1994; Saunders,
1988) .
Only a few
researchers have attempted to understand how bilingual children

are socialized into using code-switching
(Kwan-Terry, 1992;
Lanza, 1992) .
The database for most of the adult and child code-switching
research has been limited to Indo-European languages.
However,
some of the structural constraints found in the code-switching of

Indo-European languages do not appear to be applicable to
Mandarin-English speaking adults
(Lu, 1991; Tay, 1989).
Few
researchers have studied the code-switching of Mandarin-English

speaking children.
There are three reasons why the study of bilingual
children's code-switching is interesting.
First, the study of
bilingual children's code-switching can provide insights into

children's bilingual language development, which in turn, can
contribute to our understanding of children's language
acquisition.
As Levy (1985) has suggested, bilingual acquisition
can shed more light on the limits of language acquisition or,

more positively,
it can inform us about the potential for
language learning in early childhood:
the strengths and weakness that bilingual children manifest

may prove revealing with respect to the issue of
establishing the limitations upon the potential linguistic
abilities of children at a given phase in development.
This
may help establish the boundaries within which the process
of language acquisition must unfold and thus be,
theoretically, extremely informative, (p. 552)
Second, when studying bilingual children's code-switching,
it is
natural to associate the children's code-switching behavior with

the language input in their community (Genesee, 1989).
This in
turn raises questions regarding acquisition in general.
The role
of input in monolingual children's language acquisition is

probably almost as important as that for bilingual children.
However, because the language input to which monolingual children
are exposed is relatively more homogeneous
(i.e., one language in
comparison with a more varied bilingual input condition), the

precise nature of its influence is much less obvious. Studies of
bilingual children can thus "contribute to the debate within
monolingual acquisition as to the role of the input"
(Lanza,
1990, p. 447).
Finally, the study of bilingual children's code-switching
can provide valuable information about what is normal for
bilingual children's language development. When children are
raised in a bilingual situation, family members often are faced
with prejudices against bilingualism (Koehn & Muller, 1990) .
Many of these prejudices are due to ignorance about bilingual
children's language development in general and code-switching in
particular.
Romaine
(1989) warns that an especially distressing
situation occurs when "many professionals such as speech
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therapists view normal language mixing as harmful and are

therefore liable to give advice to parents which is not in
keeping with the realities of normal bilingual development"
213).
(p.
Some bilingual families have abandoned the support of
bilingualism due to "official" warnings about the presumed

negative effects of a bilingual upbringing for their children
(Saunders, 1988).
Thus studies of bilingual children's code
switching behavior can clarify misconceptions held by many

monolinguals as well as bilinguals.
In addition to the three previously mentioned reasons, there
are two more specific reasons why I chose to study MandarinEnglish speaking children's code-switching.
First, I share the
same cultures and languages with these children.
Thus, I feel
more obligated and competent to describe their code-switching

behavior than any other bilingual children's.
Second, although
Mandarin-English speaking bilinguals are the largest group of

Asian Americans in the United States
(Gardner, 1989), research on
their code-switching behavior is scarce.
To my knowledge, only
two published studies have examined Mandarin-English or

Cantonese-English speaking children's code-switching behavior
(Cheng, 1986; Kwan-Terry, 1992).
These two developmental studies
documented young Chinese children's simultaneous acquisition of

their native languages and English within the confines of their
homes.
Kwan-Terry studied the functions of a Cantonese-English
speaking child's code-switching patterns during his interactions

with his family members, especially his mother.
Despite her
insightful analysis of the differences in functions between the

focal child's switching from one language to the other, KwanTerry did not provide any information about the child's code
switching behavior in interactions with teachers and peers in the
school setting.
Her failure to do so prevents us from knowing
the influences of school language on the child's language

patterns.
According to Orellana (1994),
"schools exert an
influence on children's language patterns both directly, through

the languages used for instruction and modeled in the formal
curriculum, and indirectly, through peer interactions"
(p. 173).
The study by Cheng, on the other hand, merely documented the

focal child's speech patterns.
She did not inform us about the
social functions of the child's code-switching behavior.

she address the influences of different social variables
Nor did
(e.g.,
participants, topics, and settings) on the child's code-switching

behavior.
Few researchers
(Kwan-Terry, 1992; Lanza, 1992) interested
in studying bilingual preschool children's code-switching have

attempted to explore the processes through which young children
are socialized as bilinguals. A theory of how bilingual children
develop code-switching has yet to be formed (Lanza, 1992) .
In
order to better comprehend how bilingual children develop code

switching behavior, it is necessary to examine not only the
children's linguistic productions, but also the process through
which they are socialized into producing such speech patterns
across different settings.
Purpose of the Study

Kwan-Terry (1992) concluded that her focal child's flexible
use of two languages with his mother was a result of language
socialization.
She hypothesized that the child used a great deal
of code-switching while interacting with h i s mother because she

also code-switched frequently.
With other family members, he
adhered rigidly to one particular language, similar to how they

interacted with him.
One of the purposes of this thesis is to
document Mandarin-English speaking preschool children's code

switching behavior at school, home and in a local play group at
my apartment and to conduct a sociolinguistic analysis of their
code-switched speeches.
By examining their code-switching
patterns across these settings, we can begin to understand the

influence of different physical settings on the children's code
switching as well as the varying socializing influences of school
language (the dominant language), home language, and peer
language on their language behavior.
The current study seeks to understand the similarities and
differences between the focal children's code-switching behavior
and that of other bilingual children (Fantini, 1985; Orellana,
1994; McClure,
1982).
1981) and adults (Appel & Muysken, 1987; Gumperz,
Due to the fact that the children's second language
system is not yet completely developed, examination of the

various functions that characterize the children's code-switching
can help us gain some insight into their developing second
language proficiency.
In addition, this examination also helps us understand the

extent to which bilingual children as young as four years old are
capable of using code-switching to mark a change in their role
relationships with their conversational partners.
The ability to
use code-switching to change interpersonal relationships with

conversational partners tends to be an indication of more
sophisticated linguistic knowledge and awareness of communicative
and social conventions. Researchers examining this aspect of
bilingual children's code-switching found that younger children
generally failed to do so.
For example, McClure's (1977, 1981)
research on bilingual Mexican-American children's (ages 2-9)

code-switching demonstrated that code-switching to mark a shift
in role relationship was more common among older children.
Genishi
(1981) concluded that, due to developmental differences,
her four 6-year-old Mexican-American children were unable to

code-switch to mark their interpretations of speakers'
sociolinguistic backgrounds and conventions.
However, there is some evidence, albeit limited,
suggesting
that bilingual/trilingual children can exploit code-switching to

mark a change in their personal relationships with their
conversational partners.
For example, in a case study of two
trilingual children (English-Spanish-Hebrew), Stavans
(1992)
reported that the older child (the exact age is unspecified, but
older than 5 years 5 months)
occasionally spoke to the younger
child in Hebrew as if it accorded him authority and made him

appear "superior" for this extra ability.
Genishi (1981) also
documented an instance of a Mexican-American boy's

6 and 6 years 2 months)
English to Spanish)
(ages between
intentional use of code-switching (from
to tell on his Spanish monolingual classmate
to the bilingual teacher.

Finally, the study seeks to understand the relationship
between the children's language proficiency and their code
switching patterns.
Wentz and McClure (1975) found that Mexican-
American children (ages from 2 to 9) who did not have equal or

almost equal proficiency in Spanish and English tended to switch
more often at the word level, whereas those children with equal
or almost equal proficiency (in general the older children)
in
the two languages tended to switch at the constituent level

(e.g., phrases and clauses).
In other words, there appeared to
be a developmental trend between the children's language

proficiency and their code-switching patterns.
By examining the
focal children's language proficiency and their code-switching

patterns, I wish to find out if similar relationships also exist
in their language behavior.
Rationale for a Qualitative Research Design
I assumed that children's language was best understood when
studied in naturalistic contexts. Most researchers interested in
bilingual children's code-switching usually examined such
behavior in only one naturalistic context, either at home
Terry, 1992; Lanza, 1992; Stavans, 1992) or at school
1981).
(Kwan-
(Genishi,
Few have studied such behavior across the settings
(McClure, 1977, 1981).
Given that my intent was to describe and
understand the influences of different physical settings on the

children's code-switching as well as the varying socialization
influences of school language (the dominant language), home
language, and peer language on their language behavior, I needed
to go to the particular settings (i.e., home, school, and a local
play group at my apartment) and immersed myself in the children's
daily lives in order to accurately present the different social
influences on their code-switching.
I felt that my presence in
the settings helped me better comprehend the process through

which the children were socialized into using code-switching.
addition,
In
interviewing and active participant observation also
allowed me to bring the whole range of my senses to the analysis

and gave me ample time to comprehend the "complexity"
(Glense &
Peshkin, 1992) of the phenomenon. Qualitative methods also

enabled me to view the children's code-switching from an "emic"
perspective. Because my aim was to describe and understand the
various social influences on these children's code-switching
behavior, an inductive approach seemed more appropriate.
the constant-comparative method (Glaser & Strauss,
analyze my data.
I used
1967) to
Comparing and organizing different types of
data (e.g., observational and interview data) helped me sort out

the underlying meanings behind the children's code-switching,
which, in turn, enabled me to accurately present their behavior.
Research Questions
The following questions guided the initial data collection:
1.
What are the functions or purposes of young bilingual
10
Mandarin-English speaking children's code-switching?

2.
What characterizes the children's code-switching from
Mandarin to English and vice versa?

Later, three more salient questions emerged from my
sociolinguistic analysis.
3.
They were:
What is the relationship between the mothers' use of
code-switching and the children's use of code-switching?

4.
To what extent do different physical settings have an
influence on the children's code-switching behavior?

5.
What is the relationship between the children's English
proficiency and their code-switching patterns?
11
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
I begin this chapter with a discussion of the definition of
code-switching. Next I review studies dealing with the influences
of situational factors on bilingual adults' code-switching, and
then examine the conversational functions of such behavior.
also discuss studies that specifically address speakers1 reasons

for code-switching.
Then I review studies addressing the same
issues among bilingual children.
A discussion of the two studies
on Mandarin- and Cantonese-English speaking children's code

switching also is presented.
Finally,
I conclude this chapter
with a summary.
Definition of Code-Switching and Code-Mixing
The distinction between code-switching and code-mixing has
triggered numerous discussions in the literature.
In terms of
the formal/syntactic structure, the most common distinction

between code-switching and code-mixing is that the former
involves intersentential changes between two or more different
languages, whereas the latter involves only intrasentential
changes (Bokamba, 1989) .
Thus while code-switching involves the
embedding or mixing of words, phrases and sentences from two or

three codes within the same speech event and across sentence
boundaries, code-mixing involves the embedding or mixing of
various linguistic units, namely, morphemes, words, phrases and
clauses from two distinct grammatical systems or subsystems
within the same sentence and the same speech situation.
Such a
12
formal/syntactic distinction is useful for pure linguistic

analysis of bilingual adults' code-mixed or code-switched speech.
However, when the research focus is on analyzing the
communicative intent of interlocutors during code-mixed or codeswitched speech events in multilingual communities, such a
contrast is deemed unwarranted.
Tay's
(1989) analysis of the utterances of one university
student in Singapore who uses English (E), Mandarin
(M), and
Hokkien (H) illustrates why the distinction among code-mixing and

code-switching can be artificial when examined in a multilingual
context
(English is capitalized)
OH, I SEE, guaibude (M) . Wo xie Yingwen bijiao kuai (M) .

Gua sia eng boon luan ju tu luan ju sia (H). Jiaru (M)
MOVE de (M) FAST, botekkhak o (H). Duibuqi (M). I GOT TO
GO.
(OH, I SEE, no wonder.
I write faster in English.
I simply
scribble and write carelessly in English.
If I MOVE FAST,
I 'm not sure. Sorry. I GOT TO G O .)
The first sentence "Oh, I see, guaibude" appears to be codemixing with the first part being English and the second part
Mandarin.
This is followed by a sentence in Mandarin and another
in Hokkien expressing almost the same idea.
As these are
intersentential, they should presumably be classified as examples

of code-switching.
The next sentence comprises one Mandarin word
meaning "if" followed by a subordinate clause in which the verb

and adverb are in English but with a Mandarin particle inserted
in between, followed by the main clause in Hokkien.
This is
presumably an example of code-mixing again.
The next two
switches, however, occur intersententially.
The first is
13
Mandarin, the second is English, and should, presumably, be

classified as code-switching-
Tay (1989) argues that classifying
the entire exchange in this way, as an alteration between codeswitching and mixing, seems counterintuitive.
It breaks up the
discourse in a way which does not reflect the intention of the

speaker.
Other researchers insist on the differentiation between
code-switching and code-mixing on the grounds that each makes
different linguistic and psycholinguistic claims (Bokamba, 1989;
Kachru, 1978, 1982a; Sridhar & Sridhar, 1980) .
"competence" argument,
According to this
"code-switching does not require the
integration of the rules of the two languages involved in the

discourse, whereas code-mixing does"
(Bokamba, 1988, p. 24).
It
is likely that switching within a sentence versus switching at a

sentence boundary makes different cognitive demands. Bokamba
(1988) claims that it is code-mixing, not code-switching, that
exemplifies the most advanced degree of bilingualism because
code-mixing requires considerable competence in the simultaneous
processing of the grammatical rules of the language pair.
Myers -
Scotton (1989), on the other hand, argues that such a distinction

is poorly motivated and unwarranted because "both intra- and
intersentential switches can occur as part of the same
conversational turn, with both serving the same social function"
(p. 334).
Although most researchers have focused on bilingual adults'
code-switching behavior, several researchers have focused on
14
bilingual children's code-switching (Cheng & Butler, 1989;

Genishi, 1981; McClure, 1977, 1981; Zentella, 1978).
divided code-switching into two subtypes:
code-mixing.
McClure
code-changing and
According to her explanation, code-changing is
generally motivated by situational and stylistic factors and is

the alternation of languages at the level of the major
constituent.
Code-mixing, however,
"occurs when a person is
momentarily unable to access a term for a concept in the language

which he is using but can access it in another code, or when he
lacks a term in the code he is using which exactly expresses the
concept he wishes to convey"
(McClure, 1977, p. 98).
Such a
definition is more tied to performance constraints.

Meisel
(1994) offers a similarly functional definition to
describe bilingual children's code-switching.
He uses language-
mixing to refer to all instances where features of two languages

coexist.
If specific instantiations of mixing can be traced back
to a failure in separating the two grammars, he terms this

fusion.
Code-switching is defined as a particular "skill of the
bilingual's pragmatic competence"
(Meisel, 1994, p. 414), that
is, the ability to change languages within an interactional

sequence in accordance with sociolinguistic rules and without
violating specific grammatical constraints.
Code-mixing, on the
other hand, refers to those instances where the speaker violates

the constraints on code-switching that normally govern the
linguistic behavior of the bilingual community.
Meisel
According to
(1994), these constraints can be defined "in terms of
15
grammar, discourse organization, or social rules"
(p. 414).
Although Meisel's concept of code-switching is not dissimilar to

McClure's concept of code-changing, his definition of code-mixing
is slightly different from hers.
Meisel's definition of code-
mixing seems to indicate a speaker's lack of linguistic,

pragmatic or social competence; whereas McClure's refers to a
speaker's temporary performance difficulty.
As confusing and conflicting as these definitions may
appear, most researchers, whether they are structurally or
functionally oriented,
seem to agree that the language switch
phenomenon observed among bilingual adults and children tends to

reflect their communicative competence (Cheng & Butler, 1989).
Nonetheless, it is true that young bilingual children's code
mixed utterances(in McClure's sense) may reflect their temporary
inability to retrieve a code in one language due to their
relatively unsophisticated language development.
However, their
temporary inability to retrieve a code is certainly not the sole

factor triggering their language switch.
There might be cases in
which language-mixing (in Meisel's sense) reflects bilingual

children's communicative strategies in conveying special meaning
such as addressee specification (McClure, 1981).
McClure
reported that when the relevant characteristics of the new

addressee (e.g., physical appearance, language backgrounds, etc.)
are different from those of the previous one, a language switch
is common.
However, a language switch sometimes occurred even
when the relevant characteristics of two sequential addressees
16
were the same:

H (girl, 13):
[To Rosa, a Spanish-English speaking girl]

Preguntale a PATTY.
Preguntale.
(Ask PATTY. Ask h e r .)
H:
[To Patty, another Spanish-English speaking

girl]
W ASNT I AT THE HOUSE? (p. 81)
McClure construed the previous language switch as avoiding the

necessity of a later message, such as "I'm not talking to you;
I'm talking to Maria."
For the purpose of this research,
I will use code-switching
as a cover term to refer to all instances where features of two

languages are juxtaposed, intra- or intersententially.
The
purpose of doing so is to avoid any prespecified association of

certain terms with the competence of the bilingual children under
study.
Code-Switching of Bilingual Adults
Researchers who have examined bilingual adults' code
switching generally have followed two paradigms: structural and
functional.
Those who have approached code-switching from a
structurally-oriented paradigm have attempted to describe and

explain the structural characteristics found in code-switched
utterances.
On the other hand, those who have approached code-
switching from a functional paradigm have tended to describe and

classify the social functions (or purposes) of such behavior.
Because my intention is to understand the speaker's code
switching from a sociolinguistic perspective, I primarily review
studies dealing with the social functions or purposes of code-
17
switching.
According to Blom and Gumperz(1972), there are two kinds of
functions of code-switching:
situational and metaphorical.
In Hemnes [the research site], situational switching

involves change in participants and/or strategies,
metaphorical switching involves only a change in topical
emphasis, (p. 409)
One would question how a change "in strategies" differs from a
change in "topical emphasis"? Although Blom and Gumperz continued
to mention "topic" when discussing metaphorical code-switching,
it seems that topic was not really what they wished to relate to
metaphorical code-switching, but a "presentation of self" in
relation to the topic, or changes in relationship to other
participants
(Blom & Gumperz , 1972, p. 425) :
The language switch here relates to particular kinds of

topics or subject matters rather than to change in social
situation.
Characteristically, the situations in question
allow for the enactment of two or more different
relationships among the same sets of individuals.
Blom and Gumperz1s (1972) analysis of a conversation held by
a group of Ranamal-Bokmal speaking university students showed
that the students' switches to standard dialect (Bokmal) was not
solely due to topic.
Their use of standard dialect also marked
their shared experiences as intellectuals.
In other words, the
switch was characterized by a topic change as well as the

speakers' intention to validate their status as intellectuals.
This explanation seemed to be different from Blom and Gumperz's
original definition of metaphorical code-switching, which only
involved "a change of topical emphasis".
18
In a later book entitled Discourse strategies. Gumperz

(1982) posited another synonym for metaphorical switching:
conversational switching, which he defined as a speaker's
creative use of code-switching.
He wrote (p. 61):
Rather than claiming that speakers use language in response

to a fixed, predetermined set of prescriptions, it seems
more reasonable to assume that they build their own and
their audience's abstract understanding of situational
norms, to communicate metaphoric information about how they
intend their words to be understood.
He further explained that the "signaling mechanism" involved in
conversational code-switching is "a shift in contextualization
cues, which is not accompanied by a shift in topic and in other
extralinguistic context markers that characterize the situation"
(p. 98).
cues"
He gave an idea of what he meant by "contextualization
(p. 98) :
Code-switching signals contextual information equivalent to
what in monolingual settings is conveyed through prosody or
other syntactic or lexical processes.
It generates the
presuppositions in terms of which the content or what is
said is decoded.
Blom and Gumperz's distinction between situational and
metaphorical
(conversational) code-switching has been criticized
for lack of clarity and consistency (Auer, 1984; Pride, 1979;

Myers-Scotton,
1983).
Their functional taxonomies changed as
they were used, reviewed, and critiqued.
Nowadays researchers
generally agree that situational code-switching is externallytriggered, and metaphorical (conversational) code-switching is
internally-motivated.
In other words, the former usually
reflects changes in situational factors (e.g., makeup of

participants,
topic, physical setting, etc.), whereas the latter
19
reflects the speaker's internal motivations or purposes which are

not tied to situational variables. Subsequent researchers
(Boeschoten & Verhoeven, 1987; Genishi,
1981; Kwan-Terry, 19 92;
Lu, 1991; McClure, 1981; Tan, 1988; Tay, 1989; Stavans; 1992)
generally have followed the dichotomy between situational and
conversational code-switching when discussing the functions of
code-switching.
Situational Code-Switching
In the following section, I examine the situational factors
that influence bilingual adults' code-switching.
The situational
factors discussed include participant, topic, and social status.

The purpose of reviewing the following studies is to find out
whether the situational factors reported to influence bilingual
adults' code-switching also affect the focal children's code
switching .
Participant
A change in participants can affect bilingual adults' code
switching.
Lu (1991) studied the code-switching of 12 Mandarin-
English speaking bilingual adults in Honolulu. He reported that

the presence of a monolingual English speaker resulted in
increased code-switching to English by the bilingual.
Tay (198 9)
examined a spontaneous conversation recorded among MandarinEnglish-Hokkien-Teochew multilinguals in Singapore.
She also
found that a single Cantonese-English speaker's presence evoked

her trilingual
(Mandarin-English-Hokkien)
switching from Mandarin to English.
interlocutors' code
Kachru's
(1982, p. 33)
20
documentation of a father's code-switching among three different

languages in an Indian family setting demonstrated the effect of
participants on code-switching:
[On the phone] WHEN WILL YOU COME?
[To his wife in Kashmiri] me ditav kagaz pensali
(Please give me some paper and a pencil.)
[On the
phone] WHAT IS YOUR ADDRESS?
[To his children in Hindustani] sor mat karobhai,

karo
(Don't make noise, keep quiet.)
[To his
(Please
zara cup
wife in Kashmiri] talay yim kar navukh tsh?pi.

keep them quiet.)
[On the phone]
ALL RIGHT,
I WILL WRITE TO YOU.
THANK YOU.
Bokamba (198 9) and Myers-Scotton (1993) noted similar

instances of code-switching among East Africans.
Sanchez
(1978)
also discussed the code-switching of Spanish and English in a

bilingual household.
The daughters usually used Spanish in
conversations with their parents and grandparents.
However, when
they talked to each other, the three daughters spoke in English.

Topic
Researchers such as Valdes-Fallis
(1976) believe that code
switching is topic-bound; that is, for some people, code

switching occurs when they are discussing certain topics.
For
example, English speaking bilinguals in the field of computer

sciences tend to code-switch to English when they talk about
computers, using terms such as debugging, batchwork, and
artificial intelligence. In other words, the topic of the
discourse may influence the speakers' choice of language to a
21
greater or lesser degree.

Huerta-Macias1s (1981) case study of a bilingual Chicano
family demonstrated that code-switching among the family members
(from Spanish to English) occurred most often with a change in
the mode of discourse.
The family members switched from Spanish
to English when the topic changed from casual to formal,

particularly when it shifted from family matters to work or
school.
Such a language switch, she argued, did not occur due to
a change in the setting because all the conversations were held

at home.
Social Status
Jacobson (1982) studied the correlation between MexicanAmericans' socioeconomic status and code-switching practices.
He
speculated that the differences in the selection of codes seemed

to correlate with the speaker's membership in a SES class.
According to Jacobson, lower SES speakers seemed to prefer
Spanish with English lexical or syntactic embeddings (frame A ) ,
whereas middle SES speakers seemed to select utterances
simultaneously encoded in the two languages
(frame AB).
In
contrast, upper middle SES speakers preferred English with

Spanish embeddings
(frame B ) .
Jacobson
(1982) considered the
preference for frame B utterances to be a function of educational

as well as socioeconomic achievement. He argued that the
speaker's choice of frame B (English with Spanish insertions) was
not due to his/her inability to use other alternatives.
Rather
it demonstrated the priority which the speaker accorded to the
22
English frame.
In other words, the speaker's selection of frame
B is more related to deliberateness than to necessity.

In an attempt to reexamine the credibility of such a claim,
Jacobson (1990) replicated his previous study with a larger
sample (9 Mexican-Americans) .
Employing the Metropolitan Class
Structure developed by Coleman and Rainwater (1980), he

classified the speakers under study into seven socioeconomic
categories
(upper-upper, lower-upper, upper middle, middle,
working, semipoor, and the bottom) with corresponding occupations

and salaries.
When he tested the speakers' utterances against
previously established frames (A, B, A B ) , he found little

correlation between the speakers1 SES and their code-switching
patterns.
Jacobson attributed such a result to his disregard of
the interaction of two other crucial variables:
age and gender.
In view of the mixed results obtained from different subjects, he

concluded that membership in a given socioeconomic group is not
the only factor responsible for frame preferences, and that
gender and age also play determining roles that may overturn the
expectations based on SES grouping alone.
Other reports on the relationship between code-switching and
socioeconomic status are based on personal observations.
Bokamba
(198 9) found that while one commonly witnesses both code

switching and code-mixing in intra-family conversations among
urban and educated family members in multilingual Zaire and
Nigeria, code-mixing (intrasentential code-switching)
is
generally absent when rural members of the family are involved.
23
Drawing from his own experience in the aforementioned society,

Bokamba (1989) claimed that code-mixing was predominantly a
communicative behavior of educated speakers. In contrast to the
negative attitudes toward code-mixing reported in other bilingual
societies
(Gibbons, 1983; Ghana & Romaine, 1984), Bokamba
reported that people who are able to code-mix in two or three

different languages in the aforementioned multilingual societies
are viewed as accomplished language users.
Kachru (1978) also observed a similar phenomenon in India.
He claimed that code-mixing is a marker of modernization,
economic position, and membership in an elite group in India.
According to his observation, the widest register range is
associated with code-mixing in English, which is mainly employed
in those contexts where one would like to demonstrate "authority,
power, and identity with the establishment"
(p. 114).
Conversational Code-Switching
Conversational code-switching refers to those instances of
switching which reflect the speaker's internal motivations or
purposes.
This type of code-switching generally is not tied to
the situational factors
(e.g., makeup of participants, setting,
topic).
I will discuss the conversational functions posited by
Gumperz
(1982) and by Appel and Muysken (1987) respectively. The
purpose of reviewing the following studies is to find out whether

the functions identified as characterizing bilingual adults'
code-switching also characterize the focal children's code
switching .
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24
Gumperz1s Model
Gumperz
(1982) found similar conversational functions in
code-switched discourses of three bilingual groups of adults:

German-Slovenian, Hindi-English, and Spanish-English.
The data
were recorded from actual conversational exchanges and were

analyzed by the discourse analysis method.
functions Gumperz identified were:
reported quotations,
The conversational
(a) directed quotations and
(b) addressee specification (when the
message is directed to one of several possible hearers), (c)

interjections
(to express one's feelings),
(d) reiteration (to
repeat the preceding message), (e) message qualification (to

qualify the preceding message) , and (f) personalization (to
express personalized statements) and objectivization (to express
more objective statements, which reflect less speaker
involvement).
Although Gumperz1s classification has been criticized as
"disparate" because "some headings are structurally based,
[while] others refer to motivations"
(Myers-Scotton, 1993, p.
54), several researchers have used his taxonomy to analyze

bilingual adults' code-switching.
For example, Tay (1989) used
his interpretive framework to examine the code-switching among

English-Mandarin-Hokkien-Teochew multilinguals during a natural
conversation in Singapore.
Except for message qualification, she
documented all of the conversational functions posited by

Gumperz. Tan (1988) also documented all the conversational
functions in a multilingual household in Singapore.
25
Appel and Muvsken's Taxonomy

Appel and Muysken (1987), drawing on a functional framework
developed by Jakobson (1960), suggested six functions for code
switching in general.
Although they did not make a distinction
between situational and conversational code-switching, most of

the functions they identified are conversationally related (in
Gumperz's sense) except for the referential function.
According
to Appel and Muysken , "all topic-related switching may be

thought of as serving the referential function"
(p. 118) .
Hence
referential code-switching becomes more like situational code

switching.
The remaining five functions posited by Appel and Muysken
(1987) are:
(a) directive function, which involves the hearer,
either by excluding or including him/her, similar to what Gumperz

(1982) called "addressee specification";
(b) expressive
function, when the speaker stresses his/her mixed identity

through his/her use of two languages in the same discourse
(Poplack, 1980);
(c) phatic function, which indicates "a change
in the tone of the conversation"
(p. 119);
(d) metalinguistic
function, when the speaker uses it to "comment directly or

indirectly on the language involved"
(p. 120); and (e) poetic
function, when the verbalization of puns, jokes, and so on occurs

in another language.
Myers-Scotton (1993) made a minor criticism of Appel and
Muysken's classification. She argued that the distinction between
"expressive" and "phatic" was vague and vacuous.
She also
26
pointed out that there is no apparent relationship between each

function, and that, from the perspective of social motivations,
"referential" and "metalinguistic" functions of code-switching
are not as important as the others.
Myers-Scotton's argument
leads to another type of research primarily focusing on bilingual

adults' motivations for code-switching, which I have termed
intentional code-switching.
Intentional Code-Switching
According to Myers-Scotton (1989), examining the influences
of situational factors on code-switching and the conversational
functions related to stylistics (e.g., quotation,
interjections,
phatic function, etc.) appears to overlook the most crucial

variable in such a selection:
motivations.
the speakers' internal
As argued persuasively by Myers-Scotton (198 9),
speakers do not use language simply because of their social

identities or because of other situational factors.
Rather, they
exploit the possibility of linguistic choices in order to convey

intentional meaning of a socio-pragmatic nature.
Sometimes they
code-switch according to the expected norm; other times they do

so to negotiate a new set of rights and obligations.
Myers-
Scotton' s markedness theory (1983) mainly focuses on speakermotivated (rather than role-affected or situation-triggered) use
of two or more linguistic varieties (language, dialects or
styles)
in the same conversation.
Mvers-Scotton1s Markedness Model

The premise of Myers-Scotton's model is that speakers make
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27
the code choices they do because they are using these choices to
negotiate interpersonal relationships.
The negotiation principle
directs the speaker to "choose the form of your conversational

contribution such that it symbolizes the set of rights and
obligations which you wish to be in force between speaker and
addressee for the current exchange"
116).
(Myers-Scotton, 1983, p.
According to this paradigm, code-switching is subdivided
into sequential unmarked choices
(similar to Gumperz's
situational code-switching, which is affected by external stimuli

such as a change in topic, setting, or interlocutor), overall
switching as unmarked choice
(such a choice is internally
motivated but follows the norm of a community), and switching as

a marked choice which defies the conventionalized norm.
It is
the latter on which Myers-Scotton focused her attention.
She
argued that only such a choice reflects interlocutors' intentions

to negotiate a new role relationship to replace the unmarked one
current in the conversational exchange.
Such choices often occur
to increase the social distance via authority/anger, to serve as

an ethnically-based exclusion strategy, or to achieve an
aesthetic effect.
Few researchers have attended to the type of code-switching
described by Myers-Scotton (1983) .
Most researchers tested their
data against the conversational functions posited by Gumperz

(1982). The following studies are some of the few that
specifically addressed the intentional employment of code
switching .
28
Code-Switching as a Strategy of Neutrality

Myers-Scotton (1976) presented evidence for the neutrality
function from peer interactions recorded in the workplace in
three African cities (Lagos, Nigeria; Kampala, Uganda; and
Nairobi, Kenya). English was the principal communicative medium
in all three cities and in inter-ethnic work situations.
The
workers who had adequate spoken command of English, and who could
speak it with their co-workers, preferred to code-switch between
English and an indigenous lingua franca. She argued that they
code-switched because the speaker was not sure whether he/she
would be more favorably perceived by workmates for stressing
his/her education (by speaking English in this case), or for
emphasizing his/her 'homely' qualities
indigenous lingua franca).
(by speaking the
She considered this type of code
switching pattern to be the "best" strategy in this type of

ambiguous situation. Heller (1988) also documented similar codeswitching patterns among bilingual adult speakers of French and
English in private enterprise in Montreal.
She argued that code
switching as a "strategic ambiguity" not only neutralizes

conflict but also may create neutrality:
[Code-switching with French] enables a speaker to do things
he or she would otherwise not be able to do:
in the case of
this company gain [sic] access to situations in which the
criterion of access is ability to speak French without
actually having to be French.
By the same token it is
possible to avoid some of the responsibilities of
categorical language choice through this kind of codeswitching (p. 86).
Gibbons
(1983, 1987) also noted that a large number of
university bilingual students in Hong Kong code-switched between
29
English and Cantonese, despite the general hostility expressed by

Hong Kong university students toward English-Cantonese "MIX".
The students disliked the "MIX" because they considered it to be
a marker of acculturation.
On the other hand, using the "MIX"
was a strategy of neutrality, which enabled speakers to avoid

appearing either totally Chinese or Western.
Code-Switching as an Exploratory Choice
Both Myers-Scotton (1988) and Heller
(1982)
found that
bilingual adults tend to use code-switching as an exploratory

choice when they are not certain of which language to use.
For
example, Myers-Scotton documented a situation in which a young

man asked a young woman to dance at a Nairobi hotel.
He did not
seem to be certain which language would help him succeed, so he

began with the most neutral choice, Swahili.
But he had little
success. Finally, following her lead, he proceeded to English.

This switching proved to be effective and he was able to dance
with her.
Heller's
(1982) example of the code-switching behavior
between a nurse and a patient in a Quebec hospital also

demonstrates similar exploratory attributes.
Given that overall
societal norms were in a state of flux, possibly because of a

change in language policies in Canada in the 1970s, the
participants in the hospital did not know which language was most
appropriate in that particular context.
As a result, there was
extensive switching between English and French in their exchange.
30
Code-Switching to Put Off Requests

Valdes
(1981) studied the use of code-switching in Spanish-
English speaking adults' expressions of direct and indirect

commands.
She concluded that such language alternation took
place strategically and served to put off requests.
She also
found similar use of code-switching in bilingual interaction when

speakers were involved in giving accounts, making challenges and
reinstating requests.
Code-Switching to Mark Ingroup Identity
Poplack (1978, 1981) contrasted one Puerto Rican adult's
speech patterns with one ingroup and outgroup interviewer.
She
found that the speaker used code-switching with the ingroup

interviewer four times as much as she did with the outgroup
interviewer.
Zentella (1981) also documented a third-grade
Puerto Rican-American teacher's code-switching from English to

Spanish to encode ingroup membership.
She commented (p. 124):
"No where is the communicative effect of her switches more

evident than in her admonitions to the class, in which the
switching between English and Spanish occurs within an
English framework, and signals constant alternation between
an impersonal, New York City school teacher 'they' code, and
the personal appeals and solidarity of a nurturing Puerto
Rican female, conveyed by segments in Spanish, the 'we'
code."
Code-Switching of Bilingual Children
The following review begins with a discussion of bilingual
children's situational and conversational code-switching.
Then
it continues to review studies that addressed bilingual

children's intentional employment of code-switching.
Finally,
ends with a presentation of two specific studies dealing with
it
31
Mandarin- and Cantonese-English speaking children's code

switching. The purpose of reviewing the following studies is to
find out whether the situational and conversational codeswitching documented among other bilingual children also
characterize the focal children's code-switching.
Participant
Researchers generally found that participant was the primary
determinant of bilingual children's code-switching (among others,
see De Houwer, 1990; Fantini, 1985; Genishi, 1981; Lanza, 1992;
Marcon and Coon, 1983; McClure, 1981; Saunders, 1988; Stavans,
1992; Volk, 1992; Zentella, 1981).
To my knowledge, the most
comprehensive research on bilingual children's code-switching

behavior is McClure's (1981) studies on the code-switching
behavior of Mexican-American children (ages 2 to 9).
Utilizing a
variety of techniques, including audio-recording naturalistic and

manipulated conversations, elicited sentence repetitions, and
elicited sentence completions, she reported that the earliest
systematic code-switching was a function of participant.
She
identified three participant characteristics that affected the

switch:
the interlocutor's language proficiency, language
preference, and social identity.
The bilingual children often
demonstrated great flexibility in accommodating their language

choice to the language dominance of the speech partner.
They
would gauge both the absolute degree of the hearer's proficiency

in both languages and the relative language proficiencies of
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32
speaker and hearer to reach a linguistic decision.

Genishi
(1981) conducted a seven-week ethnographic study of
spontaneous talk among four six-year-old Chicano children.
She
found that when the listeners were of different linguistic

abilities, the bilingual children tended to favor the
monolinguals.
They chose Spanish when speaking to an English-
dominant bilingual and a Spanish monolingual.
This language
choice seemed to suggest that they could recognize the receptive

Spanish abilities of the English dominant children.
Volk (1992) examined four, 4-year-old Spanish-English
speaking children's turn allocations in the classroom over the
course of a year.
Volk found that the bilingual children could
make a different linguistic decision than Genishi
(1981) had
suggested-favor the monolinguals when the listeners are of

different linguistic abilities.
Volk reported that the focal
children tended to favor the dominant language of most of the

members of the group when conversing with bilingual speech
partners of various linguistic abilities, none of whom were
monolingual.
According to Volk, this indicates that "the
influence of the group sometimes superseded the individual speech

partner's in the participants' use of turn allocators"
Stavans
(p. 380).
(1992) conducted a longitudinal study (15 months) of
the code-switching behavior of two trilingual
(Hebrew-Spanish-
English) children (ages 5 years 5 months and 2 years 6 months at

the beginning of the study) at home. She reported that
participants played an important role in the children's language
33
selection.
When they interacted with a monolingual friend, they
only used the monolingual friend's language
(i.e., English).
When they interacted with their parents, they tended to use a lot
of code-switching.
She concluded that the children's use of
code-switching was a function of distinguishing and assessing the

interlocutor's linguistic repertoire.
The influence of participants' linguistic abilities on
children's code-switching also was demonstrated in an
experimental study by Marcon and Coon (1983), who used fairly
balanced Mexican-American bilingual preschoolers as subjects.
Given the status of English, most Spanish speakers presumably
would know some English, but most English speakers would not know
any Spanish.
When addressed in English during the experiment,
the bilingual subjects tended to consistently respond in English.

When addressed in Spanish,
English.
the subjects used both Spanish and
Thus expectations of the addressee's language abilities
played a decisive role in the children's language selection.

Awareness of the addressee's language capabilities also was
claimed to be the major factor influencing a 3-year-old DutchEnglish-speaking girl's, Kate, code selection patterns
Houwer, 1990).
(De
When addressing monolingual interlocutors, Kate
tended to use her conversational partner's language.
But when
speaking to people whom she knew to be fluent bilinguals, she was

much more ready to use code-switching.
Zentella (1981) also reported similar influences of
participants on bilingual children's code-switching. She examined
34
Puerto Rican children's code-switching patterns in two bilingual
classrooms:
grade
one third grade
(11-13 years o l d ) .
(7-10 years old), the other sixth
Acting as a participant observer and
audiorecording the classroom activities for seven days in each

class over a period of four months, she reported that the
teacher's language choice exerted a clear effect on that of the
children in most situations.
The third-grade teacher code
switched more frequently from English to Spanish to achieve

effective communication, given that most of her pupils were
Spanish-dominant.
The sixth-grade teacher, on the other hand,
switched much less frequently, probably due to the fact that most
of her students were tested as English-dominant bilinguals.
The
third-grade teacher's constant switching between English and

Spanish modeled for her students the importance of code-switching
for a fluent bilingual.
However, she only demonstrated this
skill in content lessons such as math and in other informal

exchanges, and did not use code-switching in language lessons.
As a result, the code-switching patterns of the third-grade
children appeared similar to their teacher's usage.
Code
switching in the third-grade classroom occurred when the teacher

switched during group lessons, or during child-child and teacherchild spontaneous conversations.
Zentella (1981) concluded that
when a child replied in a language different from the teachers1,

it usually reflected his/her language proficiency, and especially
with the sixth graders,
the degree of linguistic security and
language preference.
35
Fantini
(1985) documented his child's acquisition of Spanish
and English from birth to age 9.
He also noted that participant
was the primary determinant of the child's code selection.

Saunders
(1988) ranked participant as the most important factor
in influencing his three German-English speaking children's

language choice.
Genishi
(1981) also found that participants' language
ability and language choice were the most significant factors in

influencing the code-switching behavior of her four 6-year-old
Mexican-American kindergartners.
She even ventured to
differentiate the code-switching rules between bilingual adults

and children.
She argued that bilingual adults' code-switching
was more conversationally bound; whereas, the children's was more

situationally determined (Genishi, 1981, p. 148) .
Unlike adults
who can code switch to mark their intentions and interpretations

about speakers' social/ethnic backgrounds and conventions, the
children in her study generally were unable to highlight their
ethnic differences through choice of the appropriate language.
Instead they usually used code-switching according to their
listeners' linguistic ability.
However, the sophistication of bilingual children's code
switching still has not been thoroughly documented.
Stavans
For example,
(1992) noted that apart from the participants' linguistic
repertoire, the second most influential factor triggering code

switches between the two trilingual children (Hebrew-SpanishEnglish)
in her study was discourse routines such as affirmation,
36
negation and requests for information.
All of them are similar
to those in adult speech (Gumperz, 1982) .

In addition to matching their speech partners' language
dominance, bilingual children also appear to code switch
according to their speech partners'
1977, 1981).
language preference (McClure,
McClure found that one child who was reported to be
quite fluent in English but who preferred Spanish was addressed

far more frequently in Spanish than were her peers who preferred
to use English.
Interestingly, there was a difference in the
language preference trends noted by Zentella (1978) among Puerto

Rican children and those observed by McClure among MexicanAmerican children.
Zentella found that younger children (third
graders) preferred English, but the majority of the older

children (sixth graders) preferred Spanish; whereas McClure found
an increasing preference for English with increasing age. It is
difficult to explain this discrepancy because no further
information about the language proficiency, age of arrival in the
United States, or the attitudes toward the dominant language of
the two groups of children is presented.
Social identity is the third characteristic of participants
that affects switching (McClure, 1977, 1981).
A person's social
identity is the different roles (depending on one's age, sex,

education, occupation, ethnicity, etc.) he/she takes on when
interacting with people in different situations.
For example,
when a boy interacts with his parents, caretakers, or adults from

the same community, his social identity is that of a child.
In
37
interactions with his teacher at school, his social identity is

that of a pupil.
I wish to point out that a person's social
identity sometimes changes during interactions with the same

interlocutors, as will be seen in the discussion of child-child
interactions.
According to McClure
(1981), there appeared to be a
characteristic pattern of language use associated with every

identity relationship (e.g., child-parent, child-caretaker,
teacher-pupil, etc.) among her Mexican American children.
She
reported that parent-child and child-caretaker interactions were

predominantly in Spanish.
She noted that other adult-child
interactions were also in Spanish, provided that the adult was

from the Mexican-American community.
Spanish was usually the
language norm among family and community members.

For teacher-pupil interactions, McClure found that English
was the appropriate language.
Although the Anglo instructor was
a fluent speaker of Spanish, she had difficulty maintaining

conversations in Spanish with children who knew English. The
Mexican-American teacher's aide did not encounter such difficulty
when trying to converse with the children in Spanish, although
the children occasionally addressed her in English.
McClure
interpreted the children's linguistic preference as "an alternate

identity relationship"
(p. 76).
The children tended to perceive
their relationship with the teacher's aide as that between a

Mexican American child and an adult from the same cultural
background.
Therefore, they would sometimes converse with her in
38
Spanish.
In contrast, the corresponding relationship between the
children and the teacher was that between a Mexican American

child and an Anglo adult.
As a result,
the children tended to
speak English with the Anglo teacher.

With regard to child-child interactions, whether with peers
or siblings, the discourse was mixed. McClure found that children
switched from English to Spanish when switching from a peer
relationship to a caretaker-child relationship.
She observed
that an older sister switched from English to Spanish to comfort

her younger brother when he was hurt, even though their preceding
interaction was in English.
She also noted that code-switching
to mark a shift in identify relationship was more common among

older children because "as children become older their knowledge
of English increases and so does the number of English-associated
identity relationship
accessible to them.
[e.g., teacher-pupil relationship]

Thus their use of English increases"
(p.
78) .
In addition to the participant's language proficiency,
language preference, and social identity, the participant's
discourse strategies also play an important role in bilingual
children's code-switching.
Lanza (1992) conducted a 6-month
ethnographic study of a 2-year-old girl's

acquisition of Norwegian and English.
(Siri) simultaneous
She found that Siri's
code-switching behavior varied with parental discourse

strategies.
S iri's mother negotiated a monolingual context with
her daughter through the use of requests for clarification.
39
Siri's father, on the other hand, employed strategies that

encouraged more of a bilingual context.
According to Lanza,
Siri's father frequently modeled Siri1s words in his nonnative

language, English, even though he also would supply the Norwegian
equivalents.
As a result, Siri's interactions with her mother
were essentially monolingual while interactions with her father

were more likely to produce speech in the code-switching mode.
Topic
Topic was not a major factor in the code-switching of the
children studied by McClure (1981), although there were certain
topics which were more likely to be talked about in one language
than in the other.
Fantini
(1978, 1985), in a longitudinal study of his son's
simultaneous acquisition of Spanish and English, reported similar

findings.
He did not find a close relationship between language
and topic.
However, he noted an increase in code switches which
occurred with "culturally bound" words.

In her examination of the code-switching behavior of two
trilingual
(English-Spanish-Hebrew) children, Stavans (1992)
noted that all topic-related switches were fully culture-bound.

Although there were lexical equivalents in the other languages,
the equivalents did not convey the "cultural" meanings of the
terms.
For example, the term shabat has a literal lexical
equivalent in English, Saturday, and in Spanish sabado, but no

real cultural translation as it relates to the Judeo-Hebraic
culture.
The two children used this term when referring to its
R ep ro d u ced with p erm ission o f the copyright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout perm ission.
40
cultural aspect, namely, the Jewish traditional celebration of

the Sabbath.
They did not use it when they were referring to
Saturday as another day of the week.

Boeschoten and Verhoeven (1987), studied the elicited speech
of 80 Turkish-Dutch speaking children (ages 4 to 7) during
informal adult-child interviews
(approximately 30 minutes each).
They found that the children tended to code switch from Turkish
(their native language) to Dutch when the topic was on
sociocultural life in The Netherlands.
They concluded that
Turkish children in The Netherlands used Dutch elements primarily

in domains that were closely related to their secondary
socialization process, especially in such domains as food, school
and playground.
Fantini (1985) conducted a longitudinal study of his child's
simultaneous acquisition of Spanish and English from birth to age
9. He classified his child's code-switching in terms of "normal"
communication (i.e., unmarked verbal behavior);
whether an
utterance was a quotation or narration; whether the switching was

intended to exclude or include the participants
(same as
Gumperz's (1982) addressee specification); to underscore an

utterance; to replicate a previous statement (repetition), or to
express private speech (related to Gumperz's personalization and
Appel and Muysken's (1987) expressive function).
Except for
unmarked code-switching and code-switching to underscore an

utterance, the remaining functions were similar to bilingual
41
adults' code-switching reported in Gumperz's (1982) and Appel and

Muysken's
(1987) studies.
Furthermore, Fantini noted that role
playing, storytelling, singing, and telling jokes also exerted an

influence on his son's language choice.
Orellana (1994a) also documented the influence of role
playing on the language choice of three Spanish-English speaking
preschool children.
She noted that the children used English for
playing the roles from popular children's culture and used

Spanish for regular conversations and for stage directions.
Genishi (1981) noted that addressee specification and direct
quotation were the two conversational rules in her four 6-yearold Chicano children's code-switching.
McClure (1977, 1981)
documented three conversational functions identified by Gumperz

(1982) when she studied Mexican-American children's code
switching:
quotation, addressee specification, personalization
and objectivization.
In addition, she reported five stylistic
functions which were not mentioned in Gumperz or Appel and

Muysken's studies.
She found that the Mexican-American children
code-switched for emphasis, clarification, elaboration, focus and

attention attraction.
According to her explanation, emphasis was
used to apply to the entire sentence, whereas focus referred to

the "bringing into prominence of a constituent within a sentence"
(p. 83).
Utilizing McClure's findings as a framework, Boeschoten
and Verhoeven (1987) found that Turkish-Dutch speaking children

were able to use code-switching to attract attention and to give
emphasis, elaboration or focus. De Houwer (199) noted that a
42
English-Dutch speaking girl code-switched to play with words,
to
correct others' mistakes, and to make explicit metalinguistic

comments.
Finally, Saunders
(1988) found that the most salient
functions of his German-English speaking children's code

switching were indirect and direct quotations as posited by
Gumperz
(1982) .
He further identified three factors that seemed
to motivate their use of code-switching in quoting others.

factors were
These
(a) a feeling of inappropriateness to quote someone
in a language he or she does not speak,
(b) a desire to capture
the flavor of the original utterances which may otherwise be lost

in translation, and (c) an intention to relieve oneself of the
difficulty in retrieving a vocabulary item.
Reports of bilingual children's intentional code-switching
are relatively few.
Genishi
(1981) documented an instance of a
Spanish-English boy's unexpected use of Spanish to tattle about a

Spanish monolingual classmate to his teacher.
The bilingual
boy's switch from his habitual use of English to Spanish was

apparently made
(a marked choice) so that the monolingual boy
would know he was being "told on."

study of two trilingual
Stavans
(1992), in a case
(English-Spanish-Hebrew) children's
language behavior, noted that the older trilingual child

occasionally spoke to the younger child in Hebrew to display his
authority and superiority over his younger sibling.
This
intentional code-switching was similar to Myers-Scotton1s (1983,

1993) marked code-switching.
43
Code-Switching of Mandarin- and Cantonese-English

Speaking Children
To my knowledge, only two published studies have focused on
the code-switching behavior of Mandarin-English or CantoneseEnglish speaking children, one in Singapore (Kwan-Terry, 1992) ,
the other in the United States (Cheng, 1986).
Both are
longitudinal studies and developmental in nature. Kwan-Terry

(1992) studied the code-switching behavior of a Cantonese-English
speaking child, Elvoo, between the ages of 3 years 6 months and 5
years.
She reported that Elvoo's selection of code reflected the
language socialization to which he was exposed.
With those
family members who only used one language while interacting with
him, Elvoo just used that language.
In interactions with his
mother who used both English and Cantonese with him, Elvoo used a
great deal of code-switching, as long as he was not particularly
emotionally involved.
Kwan-Terry concluded that code-switching
was a very important communicative strategy for the child.
He
employed it to achieve communicative needs, such as making an

aside during role playing, reinforcing or clarifying a point.
He
also used it as an compensatory strategy to make up for his

inadequate command of vocabulary in Cantonese.
Despite her finding that Elvoo's choice of linguistic codes
reflected his language socialization, Kwan-Terry focused her
attention on only one aspect of the child's social life (i.e.,
his home life) and failed to take into account another equally
important, if not more influential facet, the child's school
44
life.
According to Kwan-Terry (1992), by the age of 4 years and
10 months, Elvoo's English had surpassed his home language

Cantonese.
It was also at this age that Elvoo started to accept
his mother's use of English to tell his favorite story.

Unfortunately, no observational data from school were available
to inform readers about how Elvoo reached this stage in his
bilingual development.
Cheng (1986) documented the code-switched utterances of a
much younger Mandarin-English speaking child from 24 to 44
months.
Although her intention was to demonstrate that the child
employed code-switching as a communicative strategy, her

quantitative analysis of the percentages of the different types
of switches failed to provide clues to how the child acquired
such communicative competence. She also did not address the
influences of social contexts on the child's code-switching
behavior.
Summary
Researchers who have examined bilingual adults' code
switching behavior from a sociolinguistic perspective generally
have found that their code-switching behavior was influenced by
situational factors such as participants (Bokamba, 1989; Kachru,
1982; Lu, 1991; Myers-Scotton, 1993; Sanchez, 1978; Tay, 1989),
topics
(Herta-Macias, 1981; Lu, 1991; Valdes-Fallis, 1976), and
social attributes such as status
(Bokamba, 1989; Jacobson,
1990; Kachru, 1978; Myers-Scotton, 1993).
1982,
In addition,
researchers have reported that speakers code-switched when there
45
is no change in participant composition or physical settings.

They have proposed different interpretations of the functions of
such behavior, which they have termed conversational codeswitching (Appel & Muysken, 1987; Gumperz, 1982) . While some
(Tan, 1988; Tay, 1989) have adopted Gumperz's functional taxonomy
to examine bilingual adults' code-switching, others have chosen
to focus on speakers'
intentional code-switching.
The latter
researchers have studied various motivations for bilingual

adults' code-switching.
They have reported that bilingual adults
use code-switching as a strategy of neutrality (Gibbons, 1983,

1987; Heller, 1988,
1992; Myers-Scotton,
1976), as an exploratory
strategy (Heller, 1982, 1992; Myers-Scotton,

to put off requests
1988), as a strategy
(Valdes, 1981), and as a strategy to mark
ingroup identity (Poplack, 1978, 1981; Zentella,
1981).
In a similar vein, researchers interested in bilingual

children's' code-switching also have found that situational
factors play a crucial role in children's code-switching.
Participant's language ability is the primary determinant (De
Houwer, 1990; Fantini, 1985; Genishi, 1981; Lanza, 1992; Marcon
and Coon, 1983; McClure, 1981; Saunders,
Volk, 1992; Zentella,
1981).
1988; Stavans, 1992;
Topic is not as influential
(McClure, 1981), although some researchers have found that

culture-bound topics seem to exert an effect on bilingual
children's code-switching (Boeschoten & Verhoeven 1987; Fantini,
1978, 1985; Stavans,
1992).
With regard to the conversational
functions of bilingual children's code-switching, researchers
46
have found that some of them are similar to those of adults'.

These functions included address specification
(Fantini, 1985;
Genishi, 1981; McClure, 1977, 1981), quotation (Fantini, 1985;

McClure, 1977, 1981; Saunders, 1988), personalization and
objectivization (Fantini, 1985; McClure, 1977, 1981), and
reiteration (Fantini, 1985) .
Researchers also have reported that
bilingual children are able to use code-switching to perform new

functions such as focus, emphasis, elaboration, attention
attraction (Boeschoten & Verhoeven 1987; McClure,
1977, 1981),
word play, correction, and explicit metalinguistic comments

Houwer, 1990).
(De
In addition, role-playing (Fantini, 1985;
Orellana, 1994) seems to play an important role in bilingual

Studies dealing with bilingual
children's intentional code-switching have been less frequent

(Genishi, 1981; McClure, 1977, 1981; Stavans, 1992) .
Young
children do not appear to code switch to mark their ethnicity

(Genishi, 1981), although they are able to use code-switching to
change their role relationships with their peers or siblings
(Genishi, 1981; McClure, 1977, 1981; Stavans, 1992) .
Bilingual children's speech productions often have been
examined without reference to the sociolinguistic contexts in
which they occur.
Thus it is difficult to analyze the possible
social factors influencing their code-switching behavior.

According to Ochs
(1988), bilingual children's code-switching
primarily depends on the social norms of their community.

Genesee (1989) also raised the possibility that the children's
47
code-switched utterances might be modeled on code-switched input

produced by adults or linguistically more mature children.
Therefore, a documentation of the speech patterns of caretakers
at home and teachers and peers at school is necessary before we
can truly understand the influences of different social forces on
bilingual children's code-switching.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
48
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
I employed a sociolinguistic approach, namely, ethnography
of communication,
to document the code-switching of three four-
year-old Mandarin-English speaking preschool children across

three different settings over a period of four months, from
January to May, 1996.
The study took place in a
Midwestern
university town in which a private preschool, the focal

children's individual homes, and my apartment were the main
research sites.
Participants
Teacher and Student Demographics at the Preschool
The preschool was a community-sponsored half-day program,
designed to address the educational needs of children (ages 3 to
5) of the local residents
(mainly international graduate students
and faculty of the university) .

preschool:
There were two classes at this
One from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., and the other from 9:30
a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Each class was taught by a head and an
assistant teacher.
All of the teachers were English-speaking
monolinguals.
The head teacher (pseudonym of Linda) of the focal
children had graduated from a nearby university with an MA degree

in early childhood education with a concentration in early
childhood development.
She had been teaching at this nursery
school for three years and had recently been promoted to director
of the school.
The assistant teacher (pseudonym of Barbara) was a
middle-aged woman who had been a teacher's aide for 10 years in a
49
school (K-4) in a nearby community thirty-five miles from the

preschool.
She had the knack of shortening the distance between
her giant figure and children who were learning English as a

second language.
While communicating with the children, she
usually used exaggerated facial expressions (protruded lips to

show sadness, wide-open eyes to indicate surprise, wiggled nose to
display silliness), dramatic voices (e.g., snoring, gobbling,
neighing, woofing), and body language.
The student composition was mainly international, or more
specifically, Asian (Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese),
with the largest group of children being Korean.
At the beginning
of my data collection, most of the children, except the focal

children and 3 English monolinguals, could not speak or understand
English, the only medium that the monolingual teachers knew.
Thanks to the working parent system, which reduced the amount of
monthly tuition, some of the mothers worked in the school once
per week to help their children and other children from similar
language backgrounds deal with one of the most traumatic periods
of transition in these children's early lives.
Participant Selection Criteria
The criteria employed for participant selection were based
on my observations in the preschool over a two-month preliminaryperiod (from October to November, 1995).
the following:
The criteria included
the children had to speak Mandarin, be able to
produce simple sentences in English, and show evidence of

speaking both languages at school and at home. The criteria used,
50
then, were based more on production than on comprehension.
Of
the four Mandarin-speaking children in the 9 a.m. class taught by

the director, only three (2 boys and 1 girl) met the criteria.
Aaron (pseudonym) was deemed to be acquiring Mandarin and English
simultaneously in accordance with the criterion established by
McLaughlin (1984), because he was exposed to the two languages
before the age of three.
The other boy, Darien (pseudonym), and
the only girl, Judith, were deemed to be acquiring English

successively due to their comparatively late exposure to English.
Darien started to learn English at the age of 3 years 3 months,
and Judith started to learn English at 3 years 1 month. Both
Aaron and Judith had been in the director's class for 12 months
and Darien for 8 months when the formal data collection period
began.
Description of the Focal Children
In the following paragraphs,
I will briefly describe the
focal children and their family members.
Table 1 summarizes the
background information on the children.

Aaron
As shown in Table 1, Aaron's parents were from Taiwan.
were pursuing doctoral degrees at the University.
They
Aaron, whose
Chinese name was Shi Tou, was the smallest of the three children.
When he was two years old, he spent a whole year at a private
day-care center near the University.
It was during this period
that he started developing a certain command of spoken English.

From my observations, Aaron was the only pupil in the class who
51
Table 1
Background Information on the Focal Children

Name
Judith
3;11--4,-6
4 ;1 - -4 ;8
Male
Male
Female
US
US
US
Sibling
1 baby
brother
None
1 older
sister
Home language
Mandarin &
Taiwanese
Mandarin
Mandarin &
English
Parents'
nationality
Taiwanese
Taiwanese
Chinese
Type of
Bilingual
Acquisition
Simultaneous
acquisition
Successive
acquisition
Successive
acquisition
Months at
school prior
to the study
12 months
8 months
12 months
Gender
Birth Place
00
.
-a*
i
i
H
Darien
Ages During
Data
Collection
Aaron
constantly attended to and responded to the teachers'

instructions, and who frequently raised questions.
Both the head
and assistant teachers would address their questions to Aaron in

order to solicit the anticipated answers, as revealed in the
assistant teacher's account:
I see Aaron as the leader.
I call on him frequently.
I do
that because he can understand my English and say it back to
me. You can definitely see the leadership quality in Aaron.
He'll be president one day.
[Laughing]
There are often
52
times he can say...give you answers before I finish the

questions.
The head teacher also considered him to be a leader:
He's always... from the very beginning of class, acts like a
leader.
Sometimes we talk about educational policeman,
watching over other children to follow the rules.
He'll
make sure that other children know.
It's his personality,
more of a leader.
He likes to take on that role.
Aaron's leadership and mature personality also were revealed on
one occasion in which all of the children were sitting in a
circle to play a game called duck, duck, goose.
Aaron explained
to Darien how to win the teachers' attention by sitting quietly

with his hands in his lap.
He further used another child's
impatience as an example to prove his point
(D=Darien, A=Aaron,
English is capitalized):
(1)
D:
A:
[Raising his hand]
I WANNA BE GOOSE.
DARIEN, bu shi RAISE HAND jiu you.

Ni yao xian zuo xia
lai. Ta men kan dao ni zuo zhe yang, cai hui jiao n i .
Bu shi RAISE HAND jiu you.
(DARIEN, it's not that you get picked by RAISing HANDs.
You need to sit down first.
If they see you sit with
your hands on your lap, they'll pick you.
It's not that
you get picked by RAISing your HAND.
[The teacher picked a different child]
A:
Ni NEXT TURN zai ju shou. Dengyixia shou ju de hen

suan. Ni yao you naixin yo! ALEXANDER jiu mei nei
xin!
(Don't raise your hand until the NEXT TURN, or your
hands are killing you. Raise your hand later.
You need
to have patience I ALEXANDER doesn't have patience!)
Such a mature personality was rarely found among his peers and
explained why he was perceived as a leader by both of the
teachers.
This mature personality was again displayed when he served
53
as a mediator to facilitate communication between the assistant

teacher and Darien.
Darien, while explaining to Barbara what he
wanted her to make for his sword, used a wrong word "stripes" to
mean "sheath".
In an attempt to speculate on his intention,
Barbara provided her guess "holster".
But her effort was in vain
because such vocabulary was beyond Darien's understanding of

English.
After closely observing the ongoing conversation
between Barbara and Darien, Aaron intervened to help.
He first
told Darien to explain his intention in his native language

Mandarin so that he could understand what Darien wanted to make
(B=Barbara):
(2)
D:
I NEED TO BE A PRINCE.
I WANT TO BE A PRINCE!
D:
[Showing Barbara where the sheath should be hung] CAN

YOU P U T . ..UH...PUT IT HERE?
I PUT STRIPE UP HERE.
STRIPES!
B:
YOU NEED TO PUT ON WHAT?
D:
STRIPES!
B:
[Using her finger to demonstrate stripes] STRIPES?
D:
NO, PUT IT LIKE THIS.
B:
LIKE A...UH HOLSTER?
D:
NO!
A:
WHAT STRIPE?
B:
I'M NOT SURE OF WHAT HE'S SAYING.
D:
[Louder] STRIPES!
A:
[To Darien] Shen me STRIPES? Wo ting bu dong. Gen wo

jiang Zhongwen, hao bu hao?
(What stripes?
I don't understand.
Explain it in
Mandarin to me, will you?)
54
Darien, however, seeing Barbara turn to greet other incoming

children, became anxious and started to speak Mandarin to her.
Aaron, seeing that Darien was about to interrupt Barbara's
conversation with other children, dissuaded him from doing so and
offered to help again. Aaron's instruction not to disturb adults
in the middle of a conversation is further proof of his mature
personality.
In the ensuing dialogue, Aaron demonstrated
enormous patience while listening to Darien's rambling

explication.
Even when Darien became impatient and started to
increase the volume of his voice, Aaron still stayed calm, trying
to ascertain that he understood Darien's intention.
His
employment of strategies such as reiterating Darien's point ("a

straight paper case?") and stating what he understood Darien to
be saying ("you mean to fold this paper first and glue it on you
like this?") are almost comparable to that of an experienced
adult.
Finally, Aaron translated what Darien wanted to
Barbara, who began to tape the paper sheath on Darien

immediately:
D:
[Approaching Barbara] Wo yao n o n g .. . (I want to make. ..)
A:
Shen me dong xi a? Ni xian. . .ni xian. . .BARBARA zai

jiang hua. Ni yao nong shen me dong xi a?
(What would you like to make? You first...you
first... Barbara is talking to someone else. What would
you like to make?)
D:
Wo yao nong zhi zhi d e .

(I want to make a straight one.)
A:
Zhi zhi de shen me?
D:
Zhi zhi de zhe ge a!
(What straight one?)

(A straight case like this!)
55
A:
Zhi zhi de zhe yi ge?
(A straight paper case?)
D:
Dui, zhi zhi de nian shang qu a!

(Yes, and then glue it near my waist!)
A:
Ni shuo yao ba zhe ge zhe yang zhe shang qu nian

shang qu yo?
(You mean to fold this paper first and glue it on
you like this?)
D:
[Louder]
Bu shi!
Zhe yang zi zhi zhi nian shang
qu, ni bu zhi dao a?
(No! I meant to glue the paper case near my waist,
get it?)
A:
Wo ting de dong. Hao, wo yao bang ni. Wo gen BARBARA

jiang.
(Got it. Ok, I'll help you out.
I'll go talk to
Barbara.)
D:
Hao .
A:
BARBARA!
I KNOW... DARIEN IS TALKING ABOUT... HE WANTS
TO PUT A . ..HE WANTS TO TAPE THIS.
B:
[Pointing to the middle of the paper sheath] TAPE

AROUND HERE?
A:
YEAH!
B:
OK.
(O k .)
WE NEED TO ADJUST THE KIND OF TAPE THEN.
The two preceding incidents demonstrated the exceptional maturity

of Aaron's personality.
Darien
The other boy, Darien, whose Chinese name was Hao Hao, was
the youngest of the three children but the biggest in size.
Darien liked to play rough whenever there was a chance.
usually imagined himself to be a super hero
He
(e.g., Batman, Power
Ranger, Robinhood, Spiderman, etc.) fighting against monsters.

Although born in the United States, Darien was sent back to
Taiwan and spent his early years with his grandparents there.
It
56
was not until he was thirty-nine months old that he was reunited
with his parents who were doctoral students at the University.
Before coming to the preschool, Darien could only say "Yes"
and "No" in English.
After 10 months of learning and acquiring
English at the preschool, Darien, at the beginning of this study,

could express himself clearly in simple sentences except when he
was
emotionally upset. An informal conversation
mother revealed that hislanguage preference
with Darien's
was English.
He
insisted on speaking imperfect English with his mother until her

patience was exhausted. He frequently asked questions about the
translation between English and Chinese.
school,
Darien would approach me for
help with the English
translation of a Mandarin sentence before

teachers
(3) D:
speaking to the
(H=Hui-Tzu):
BARBARA. . .YOU KNOW I HAVE. . .1 HAVE. . . .
D:
[Running towards Hui-Tzu and whispering]

de Yingwen zenme jiang a?
(How do I say "zuo e meng" in English?)
H:
[Whispering back]
D:
(4)
On several occasions at
YOU HAD WHAT?
D:
I HAD BAD DREAM.
B:
A BAD JEAN?
D:
NO, BAD DREAM.
B:
OH, BAD DREAM.
D:
D:
e meng
I HAD A BAD DREAM.
[Running towards Barbara]
B:
Zuo
I HAD A BAD DREAM.
BARBARA, DO YOU LIKE MY BIRTH...

[To Hui-Tzu] Wo BIRTHDAY CAKE de Yingwen zenme
shuo a? (How do I say my BIRTHDAY CAKE in English?)
57
H:
Jiu shi BIRTHDAY CAKE a!
(It's BIRTHDAY CAKED
D:
BARBARA, DO YOU LIKE MY BIRTHDAY CAKE?
B:
DID I LIKE YOUR BIRTHDAY CAKE?
D:
YEAH.
B:
WAS IT WITH PEACHES, BANANA AND LOTS OF FRUIT INSIDE?
DO YOU LIKE MY BIRTHDAY CAKE?
D:
YEAH!
B:
OH, I LOVED THAT CAKE. YUM!
In contrast to example
to say "e meng"
actually
(3) in which Darien did not know how
(nightmare, bad dream)
in English, he was
able to produce the right vocabulary for "birthday
in example
(4),
because he used the two words in addressing
question to me in Mandarin.
cake"
his
But he seemed insecure in uttering
these words without asking for my confirmation.
Despite Darien's
keen interest in learning English, he was still considered a

Mandarin-dominant bilingual.
Judith
Judith, whose Chinese name was Yuan Yuan, was the only girl
of this trio.
Darien.
She was less active at school than Aaron and
Judith liked to engage in quiet activities such as
reading books, drawing dolls and doing craft work in class.

Barbara, the assistant teacher, described Judith as being "very
artistic, very neat and precise in her coloring."
Although
Judith was very shy and usually quiet at school, her English
reading ability surpassed that of her peers.
While other
children were at the stage of struggling with the relationships

between sounds and symbols, Judith could easily decode a complete
58
English sentence. I once observed her sitting alone in the

pretend area during free-play time and murmuring the English
sentences written on a table mat
(5)
(J=Judith):
H:
Wa! Ni hui renzi, hao lihai yo.

Zhe shi shenme?
(Wow! You can recognize the words. You're great!
What's this?)
J:
THE GRAPES ARE PURPLE.
H:
Zhebian ne?
J:
APPLES ARE RED.
H:
Zhege ne?
J:
BANANAS ARE YELLOW.
(What about this?)
(What about this?)
According to Judith's mother, Judith could read English

story books designed for first-grade-level pupils.
Her emerging
word recognition ability was primarily a result of home schooling

because she never attended any day care center before the age of
three.
Judith had an older sister, Margie, who was attending
kindergarten at a public elementary school.
Whenever Judith's
mother requested that her older sister perform literacy-related

activities such as copying letters from a worksheet, Judith liked
to follow suit.
As a result of her love for reading, Judith even
possessed a larger vocabulary than her older sister, according to

her mother's observation.
Judith's mother disclosed that Judith did not speak much
English until she began to baby-sit an English monolingual girl
named G a b i :
Ta laoba qixian ji de yaoming, shuo shang le yinian de
PRESCHOOL le, zenme hai bu kaikou shuo Yingyu.
Keshi zicong
GABI lai le yihou, Yuan Yuan jiu kaishi jiao chang shuo
Yingyu le. Ta changchang yigeren duizhe jingzi shuo Yingyu.
59
Ta jiejie shang le KINDERGARTEN yihou, huilai ye genta shuo

Yingyu.
(Her father was really worried. He goes, "she's been to the
PRESCHOOL for a year. How come she didn't start speaking
English yet?" But since GABI came to our house, Yuan Yuan
has started speaking English.
She often practiced speaking
English in front of the mirror. Her older sister also began
to speak English to her since she attended KINDERGARTEN.)
The Focal Children's Language Proficiency
Drawing upon the available data corpus,
I rated the
children's oral English proficiency retrospectively by using the

Student Observation Instrument for Rating Oral Proficiency (see
Appendix A for more detailed interpretation).
ratings is from levels 0 to 5.
The range for
Level 0 refers to no proficiency
at all, and level 5 refers to a proficiency that approximates

that of a native English speaker.
Table 2 shows the children's
oral English proficiencies at the beginning (January, 1996) and

end (May, 1996) of my data collection.
of the rating,
To ensure the reliability
I asked the assistant teacher to serve as an
independent rater of the children's English proficiency at the

end of my study. I gave her a tape (for rating pronunciation and
fluency) and a transcript (for rating comprehension, grammar &
vocabulary) of the children's utterances produced during the last
month of my data collection.
Her rating turned out to be almost
the same as mine except that she rated Judith's productive

vocabulary at level 4, whereas I rated it between levels 3 and 4.
60
Table 2
Focal Children's English Oral Proficiency at the Beginning and

End of the Data Collection
Aaron
Jan May
Darien
Jan May
Judith
Jan May
Comprehension
4/5
NAa
ProductionFluency
4/5
NA
ProductionVocabulary
2/3
NA
3/4
ProductionPronunciation
NA
3/4
ProductionGrammar
1/2
2/3
NA
3/4
Note. a Judith did not speak during the first three or four weeks
of the study.
Therefore, I was unable to rate her oral English
proficiency at the beginning of the data collection.

Aaron was the most proficient of the trio in terms of oral
English at the beginning and end of my data collection.
As can
be seen in Table 2, his comprehension ability, oral fluency,

vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar had reached level 4 at the
beginning of my study.
Towards the end of my study, his
comprehension ability and oral fluency began to approximate those

of a native English speaker (between the 4th and 5ch levels) .
In
terms of his vocabulary range, pronunciation and grammar, he was

still within the range of the 4ch level, although he made steady
progress.
The following conversation was recorded during the
61
second week of my data collection.
Aaron demonstrated his full
comprehension of the head teacher's explanation of pizza, whereas

Darien showed little understanding (T=Teacher):
(6)
T:
... THEN WE 'RE GOING TO TAKE SOME CHEESE, AND SPREAD SOME
CHEESE ON TOP, AND WE'RE GOING TO PUT IT IN THE OVEN AND
BAKE IT. WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT WE'RE GOING TO MAKE?
D:
HEART!
T:
YA, WE CAN MAKE IT INTO A HEART SHAPE.

LET'S SEE WHAT
ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE CAN PUT ONTO IT. YOU CAN PUT
PEPPERONI ON IT. YOU CAN PUT MUSH. . .
D:
MUSHROOM!
A:
PIZZA!
T:
WHAT IS IT, AARON?
A:
PIZZA.
Aaron also was able to use complex English syntactic

structures at the beginning of my study (the 4ch level in terms
of grammar).
For example, when he saw a Korean-dominant child
draw a dinosaur playing the guitar, he commented,

DINOSAUR PLAYING A GUITAR BEFORE."
"I NEVER SEE A
Although there were some
grammatical mistakes, usually related to verb tense

for "saw" in the previous sentence,
for "walked" in
obscure meaning.
(e.g., "see"
"hear" for "heard" and "walk"
"I HEAR SHE WALK OVER HERE"), they did not

His pronunciation at the beginning of my study
was usually intelligible (the 4ch level in terms of

pronunciation), but there was a slight influence of Mandarin.
Towards the end of my data collection, Aaron was able to
explain the rules of a game fluently (between the 4th and 5ch
levels in terms of fluency) .
One example occurred when he wanted
62
to teach a Korean-dominant child, Chee Hang (CH), to play with

the animal puzzles:
(7)
A:
[To Chee Hang] NO! CAN YOU TURN IT OVER? OK, YOU CAN
COME THIS WAY. CAN YOU FIND ALL THE YELLOW? THIS IS
NOT YELLOW.
YOU HAVE TO FIND ALL THE YELLOW.
CH:
[Holding the yellow one in hand]

YELLOW.
YELLOW, YELLOW,
A:
THOSE ARE YELLOW.

PUT THOSE ALL TOGETHER.
PUT THOSE
IN THE RIGHT.
PUT THEM ON THE TABLE.
DON'T PUT THE
RED ONE UPSIDE [sic]. IT DOESN'T FIT TOGETHER.
Aaron's receptive abilities in English seemed to progress

more rapidly than his productive abilities.
Towards the end of
my study, some of his English utterances still followed the

Mandarin syntactic structures, such as "SNAKE IN WHERE."
In
addition, some of his English pronunciation still carried a

Mandarin accent.
abilities
those of
As a result, I did not rate his production
(e.g., vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar) as near

a native speaker at the end of my study.
Darien was more of a beginning second language learner in

terms of comprehension (level 2), fluency (level 2), vocabulary
(level 2/3), and grammar (level 1/2) when my data collection
started.
(level 3).
His pronunciation, however, was usually intelligible

He could understand the teacher's questions when the
teacher spoke slowly.
He had command of words for common objects
and activities and was able to produce formulaic speeches to

function normally in school.
However, his vocabulary seemed to
be smaller than Aaron's, which sometimes limited his

understanding of the teachers' questions.
One such example
occurred when Darien and the assistant teacher Barbara were
63
calking about the characters in the movie "Batman":

D:
YOU KNOW, I HAVE BATMAN MOVIE.
B:
YOU DO?
D:
BATMAN IS GOOD GUY, AND JOKER IS BAD GUY.
B:
RIGHT, JOKER IS A BAD GUY.
D:
CAT WOMAN IS BAD GUY.
B:
BAD "GUY" OR BAD "WOMAN"?
D:
BAD GUY.
A:
NO I
IS BATMAN A GOOD GUY OR A BAD GUY?
WHAT ABOUT CAT WOMAN?
CAT WOMAN IS BAD "WOMAN".
Despite Barbara's deliberate stress on "woman", Darien did not

appear to understand the word "woman" and thus failed to answer
her question appropriately.
her cue
Aaron, on the otherhand, picked
up
immediately and jumped in with a correctanswer.
With limited English vocabulary, Darien sometimes relied on

gestures to convey the intended message (level 2 in terms of
fluency):
(9)
D:
CAN YOU MAKE ME FIREMAN, PLEASE?
T:
HOW DO I MAKE IT, DARIEN?
D:[Demonstrating by folding the paper]

LIKE THIS.
CAN DO THAT.
BUT I JUST HAVE TWO PAPER.
TWO.
T:
OK.
MAKE YOU A HAT?
D:
NO . M A S K .
T:
A MASK?
D:
YEAH.
But
most of the time he could respond totheteachers'
YOU
MAKE A HAT?
[Demonstrating the sleeves] AND THIS
AND THIS.
simple requests properly when the teacher spoke slowly:

(10) B:
[Referring to a paper fish] DARIEN, YOU WANNA HELP MICA
64
CUT THROUGH?
D:
YEAH.
B:
WOULD YOU DO THAT?
D:
YEAH.
I WANNA CUT IT.
Towards the end of my study, Darien was able to respond to

most of the classroom discussion (level 3 in terms of
comprehension), create more novel sentences
(level 3 in terms of
fluency), and had adequate vocabulary to discuss interpersonal

topics (level 3 in terms of vocabulary).
vocabulary inappropriately sometimes.
However, he still used
One example took place
when the teacher told the children about the possibilities of

hurting themselves if they leaned over a make-shift wooden
window.
(11)
Darien meant to say hospital when he said Chicago:
T: IF I LEAN OVER THIS WINDOW, WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

D:
IT WILL FALL DOWN!
D:
[Turning to Barbara]
BARBARA, YOU KNOW SOMEFING [sic]?
I HAD A BIKE IN TAIWAN.
I RIDE MY BIKE AND I FALL DOWN
THE STAIRS AND I GO TO CHICAGO [hospital].
Darien could use basic grammar patterns correctly for

simple, familiar phrases and sentences.
His use of novel
sentences usually followed the Mandarin syntactic structures

(between levels 2 and 3 in terms of grammar).
For example, he
used "BE CAREFUL ME" to mean "watch out for me."
Some of his
pronunciation carried less of a foreign accent than Aaron's

(level 4 in terms of pronunciation).
Due to Judith's reluctance to talk during the first three to
four weeks of my study, I was unable to rate her initial oral
65
proficiency (See Table 2).
However, near the end of the study,
found that Judith could understand nearly all of the

interpersonal and classroom discussions
comprehension).
She was able to initiate a conversation with her
teachers, although it usually did not last very long.
For
example, during the school's snack time she volunteered

information about herself:
(12) J:
T:
TEACHER,
I LIKE TO EAT ANYTHING.
YOU DO?
THAT IS GREAT.
Another instance occurred when Aaron and the head teacher

were talking about skirts:
T:
[To Aaron]
A:
NO, SILLY!
T:
WHY NOT?
J:
DO YOU HAVE SKIRTS?
GIRLS HAVE SKIRTS!
Judith's speech was generally fluent
fluency) as demonstrated in the following discussion about

toppings on pizza:
(13) D:
I DON'T LIKE GREEN PEPPER.
A:
I LIKE IT.
J:
I DON'T LIKE IT.
T:
IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING ON A PIZZA YOU DON'T LIKE, WHAT

WOULD YOU DO?
D:
TAKE IT OFF!
J:
SOMETIMES YOU CAN GIVE IT TO SOMEBODY ELSE.
Judith was able to construct complicated English sentences,

but the grammar was sometimes incorrect
(between levels 3 and 4
66
in terms of grammar) , and so was her use of vocabulary

levels 3 and 4 in terms of vocabulary).
(between
Once I observed her
playing doctor at home:

(14) J:
THIS WHAT THEY SAID. BACK THIS BOOK SAYS WHAT ...WHAT
SICK YOU'RE HAVING. PUT SOME ICING ON THE HEAD. COUNT TO
TWENTY, OK? IT WILL FEEL BETTER FOR YOU.
Judith frequently tried out complicated sentence structures,

which meant that she appeared to make more grammatical mistakes
than Aaron. Other ungrammatical sentences which were recorded
during the last month included "THERE'S SOMETHING SURPRISE
AT HER",
[sic]
"SHE'S GOT EGGS GOING TO POP", and "HE OPEN THE MOVIE
AND SHUT THE MOVIE".
Because Judith produced fewer utterances
than Aaron, the grammatical mistakes that she made became more
prominent.
As a result, I rated her grammatical ability between
levels 3 and 4, which was a little lower than Aaron's.
Judith's
pronunciation was not as intelligible as Darien's or Aaron's.

Therefore,
I rated her pronunciation between levels 3 and 4.
In addition to assessing the children's oral English

proficiency,
data.
I also rated their Mandarin proficiency based on my
I employed an evaluation instrument developed by the
Washington Preschool staff in Urbana,

for interpretation).
to 6.
Illinois (see Appendix B
There are 6 levels in this rating, from 1
The lowest level (i.e., level 1) refers to almost no
proficiency at all, and the highest level (i.e., level 6)

indicates the proficiency of a native Mandarin speaker of the
same age.
Table 3 shows the children's Mandarin oral
proficiencies at the beginning
(January, 1996) and end (May,
67
1996) of the study.
My ratings were consistent with the parents'
oral report of their children's native language proficiency.
All
agreed that their children were as proficient as children of the

same age in Taiwan and China in terms of accent and fluency.
In
terms of grammar, Aaron was as proficient as a native speaker of

the same age, whereas Darien and Judith were not quite as
proficient
(level 5). The children's Mandarin vocabulary was not
as developed as their Taiwanese or Chinese counterparts
(level
5), especially in areas related to cultural activities and ethnic

food.
The lack of culturally-related vocabulary also resulted in
their incomprehension of these terms.
As a result, their
comprehension ability was not quite as proficient as a native

speaker of the same age (level 5).
Table 3
Focal Children's Mandarin Lancruacre Proficiency at the Becrinnincr
and End of the Data Collection
Aaron
Jan May
Darien
Jan May
Judith
Jan May
Accent
NA
Grammar
NA
Vocabulary
NA
Fluency
NA
Comprehension
NA
Secondary Participants
Mv Role as an Active Participant
Due to my weekly appearance as a researcher each Wednesday
morning and as a working parent each Friday morning, I
established close rapport with the three children under study.
Other children called me "teacher," but Aaron, the most
articulate of the three focal children,
(mommy) .
often called me "mama"
Whenever the three children failed to secure the head
teacher's attention, they would switch to Mandarin to attract

mine.
They would come to me for solace when they felt sad.
wanted to tell on other children when they felt angry.
They
They
proudly presented their art and craft work to me when they felt
happy.
In other words, they didn't perceive me as an outsider
but as a close family member, which made my observations less
69
intrusive and my employment of tape recorders less threatening.

Other Participants
The focal children's mothers and siblings were the secondary
participants during my weekly visit to their homes.
In addition,
the focal children's monolingual English-speaking classmates such

as Gabi and Alexander, and a Korean-dominant boy Guk Hun were the
secondary participants at school.
My son and Guk Hun were the
secondary participants when the focal children came to play at my

apartment. Guk Hun dropped out of the play group during the
second month of my data collection.
Research Sites
I observed the focal children in three different
naturalistic settings:
the focal children's preschool,
their
homes, and my apartment.

School
The preschool was located in the rear portion of a local
community center.
The door on the west side of the community
center, fenced with an iron bar, was the main entrance to the
school.
The first thing that met one's eye upon entering the
school was the peg board on which children's clothes were hung.
Above the peg board were two wooden shelves on which each child's
plastic basket was neatly placed.
The administration office was
at the left side of the hall, and the bathroom was on the right.
Down the hall way was a three-way intersection.
The middle road
led to two make-shift classrooms divided by a partition.
This
space was for regular meetings among local residents during
70
afternoons, evenings, and weekends.
To the left of the partition
was the place where the class met from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. when
attendance was checked and daily chores were assigned to pupils.
The daily chores included pasting the dates on the calendar,
wiping the table and distributing cups and napkins during snack
time, and ringing the bell to tell the class when to stop an
activity and to start another.
To the right of the partition was
the place for indoor free play where students could release their
energy by engaging in activities such as going down the slide or
crawling through a play tunnel.
The left entrance led into a hexagon-shaped classroom, where
children had their snack, listened to a story and music.
The six
walls of the classroom were decorated with colorful instructional

pictures of shapes, colors, numbers and letters, with written
print in English underneath each picture.
The ceiling was
covered with life-size paper dolls painted by pupils.
There was
also a carpeted area on the left side of the classroom where

students could snuggle in a corner to read books, spread large
toys such as an alphabet puzzle, or play with race cars, and
wooden blocks.
Pupils had free access to the books on the
counter at the rear end of the carpeted area.

The right hallway led to another hexagon-shaped room for
arts and crafts.
In the middle of the classroom was the craft
table on which pupils did their craft work everyday.
To the left
of the craft table were two wooden easels on which children could
paint pictures.
To the right of the craft table was a large
71
sandbox sometimes filled with shredded paper and sometimes with

water.
Those waiting for their turns to do craft work usually-
enjoyed playing with the water and paper shreds.
In the right-
hand corner was a "pretend play" area where pupils could put on a
fireman's helmet and clothes, carry a shopping basket filled with
plastic fruit, bottle-feed a baby doll, or ring up the prices for
customers.
The Focal Children's Homes
All of the focal children lived in two bedroom apartments.
My observations of the children's activities at home usually took
place in their bedrooms and sometimes in their living rooms.
Aaron shared his bedroom with his younger brother.
It
usually was littered with blocks and legoes due to his younger
brother's presence.
One of the walls of his bedroom was
decorated with his own art work. There was a desk on which he put
all his paintings and paper work.
He did not allow anyone to
touch them without his permission. The walls of Darien's bedroom

were covered with various instructional posters such as English
letters, numbers, simple Mandarin characters with illustrations,
and Mandarin phonetic symbols.
with both her older sister's
Judith's bedroom was decorated
(a kindergartner)
her own homework (i.e., copying letters).
school work and
There was a Macintosh
computer which Judith could turn on and off as she pleased.

According to Judith's mother, the main function of the computer
was for family enjoyment.
Judith's father had installed various
games on the computer for his daughters to play with.
72
Mv Apartment
My apartment was a studio, with living room, dining room,
and bedroom all in one large space.
Similar to the focal
children's bedrooms, my apartment was decorated with my son's

school work.
My observations and audio and video recording of
the local play group usually occurred in this space, where they
engaged in different activities such as building blocks, fitting
puzzles,
reading story books, or watching television.

Data Collection Procedures
There were two phases of data collection:

formal.
preliminary and
The preliminary observational phase started when Aaron
and Judith were 4 years and 1 month old, and Darien was 3 years
and 11 months old. When the formal observations started, Judith
and Aaron were 4 years and 5 months old, and Darien was 4 years 3
months old.
I collected observational and interview data across
the three settings.

Observational Data
School
I observed the children interacting with each other, their
peers, their teachers and other adults
(e.g., working parents,
student teachers, etc.) every Wednesday and Friday morning (9

a.m. to 12 p.m.) for a total of 16 weeks.
I took field notes
about the children's facial expressions and body gestures, the

topics which they talked about, and the children's seat
arrangement during each observed session.
In addition, I also
audio recorded each child's language production during every
73
observation.
I asked the three focal children to wear clip-on
wireless microphones in order to capture each utterance they

produced, either in monologues or dialogues.
The tape-recorder
and the wireless microphone system were put in the kitchen which
the children were prohibited from entering.
Sometimes I was
unable to record all of the children's language for the whole

period due to their sudden refusal to wear the wireless
microphones.
When one of the children declined to wear the
wireless microphone, I would wear it myself and stay close to

him/her
torecordhis/her
manner,
Iwas able
to
language as much as I could.
In this
get at least 2 hours of audio recorded data
for each child during every observation for an approximate total

of 64 hours of school data per child.
I transcribed all of the
audiotapes during the same week that I recorded them.
The
activities the children engaged in during each observation (09:00

a.m. to 12:00 p.m.) included the following:
09:00 a.m.--09:30 a.m.
Opening (parents dropped off their

children during this period, and
children sat at tables playing with
small toys such as blocks, puzzles,
or shape sorters)
09:30 a.m.--10:00 a.m.
Large group (teacher-led

instruction on dates, days,
numbers, etc.),
10:00 a.m.--10:20 a.m.
Snack time
10:20 a.m.--10:30 a.m.
Story time (the teacher read a

story to the whole class which was
sitting around her in a circle)
10:30 a.m.--11:00 a.m.
Small group (children chose one of

three activities:
craft work,
usually with a weekly theme, such
as making a fire helmet or a fire
74
dog during fire prevention week and

rainbow stew during rainbow week;
indoor free play, and art work such
as drawing pictures and cutting
paper)
11:00 a.m.--11:30 a.m.
11:30 a.m.--12:00 p.m.
Music time (the teacher played a

song or two, usually related to
numbers, animals, and color and
taught students to do some motor
skills such as clapping hands,
touching toes, shaking heads,
wiggling fingers etc.)
Playground (children played on the
slide, rode tricycles, and chased
one another)
Home
I visited each child's home one hour per week for sixteen
weeks, for a total of 16 hours of home observational data per
child.
The purposes of this one-hour weekly visit were to
observe the focal children's language behavior at home and the

relationship between their mothers' code-switching behavior (if
there was any) and their own. I audiorecorded my weekly visits. I
used a tape recorder and a PZM microphone to record the focal
children's and their mothers' language production. The children
usually played in their room during my recording.
Therefore,
most of the time I placed the tape recorder and the PZM
microphone in their bedrooms.
to another.
Sometimes they moved from one room
In this case, I would carry the PZM microphone with
me and follow them around. I also supplemented the audiorecording

by keeping a retrospective field journal in which I jotted down
notes about the settings, participants, topics, and tentative
interpretations of each observed session.
My role during the
75
visits was that of an active participant observer.
As a guest
and a friend in the home, I interacted accordingly with the focal

children, their mothers, and other family members.
The
activities recorded during this one-hour period ranged from

watching television, reading picture books,
reporting to parents on events of the day.
solitary playing or
I transcribed the
audiotapes during the same week as I recorded them.

Plav Group at Mv Apartment
I videotaped the focal children engaging in different kinds
of indoor activities at my apartment for 2 1/2 hours every other
week for 8 weeks, for a total of twenty hours of recorded data.
Important clips of the tape were immediately played back to the
children after the videotaping to elicit their perspectives on
their code-switching behavior.
During the alternate weeks I
audio recorded the children for 2 1/2 hours,

twenty hours of recorded data.
for a total of
The video- and audio recorded
activities included watching television, reading story books,

solitary playing (playing with puzzles, toys and pokers), and
pretend play (play house).
I transcribed the audio- and
videotapes during the same week that I recorded them.

Interview Data
Teachers
I conducted two semi-structured interviews
(one at the
beginning and the other at the end of the four-month research

period) with the children's head and assistant teachers
respectively.
The purposes of these interviews were to elicit
76
the teachers' opinions concerning the three children's English

proficiencies and their favorite activities at school.
Because
the head teacher was also the director of the nursery school,
inquiries regarding the school curriculum were also addressed to
her during the interviews.
I used an audiotape recorder and a
PZM microphone to record the interviews.
Each interview lasted
at least 20 minutes. All of the audiotapes were transcribed

during the same week as they were recorded.
Sample questions included the following:
1. What do you think of X's English-speaking ability? Do
you have difficulty understanding him/her when he/she speaks to
you?
2. Does X ever speak to you in a language other than
English? What's the situation like?
3. Who does X usually interact with?
4. What's X's favorite activity at school?
5. W h a t 's the goal of the school curriculum? How is the
goal implemented through daily activities?
Parents
I conducted two semi-structured interviews with each focal
child's mother at their homes both at the beginning and end of
the study.
I used an audiotape recorder and a PZM microphone to
record the interviews.
Each interview lasted at least 20
minutes. All of the audiotapes were transcribed during the same

week as they were recorded.
A list of sample questions was as
follows:
1.
What language do you speak to your child most
of the
time?
2. When would you speak the other language(s) to your
child?What's his/her reaction?
3. What language does your child speak to you most of the
time?
4. When would he/she speak the other language(s) to you?
What's your reaction?
77
5. What language does your child speak to his/her siblings,

if he/she has any? To other adults and friends?
6.
When do you use both languages at the same time? Can
you give an example?
7. When does he/she use both languages at the same time?
Can you give an example?
8. What are his/her favorite activities, TV programs, food,
and cartoon figures?
9. What do you think of his/her mixing of two languages?
Data Analysis
There were two phases of data analysis.
First, in each
transcript I identified the various communicative events in which

the code-switched utterances occurred. Saville-Troike (1989)
modified Hymes's
(1972) taxonomy and defined the communicative
event as a unit of language that included the following

components:
(a) the scene,
message form,
(b) key,
(e) message content,
(c) participants,
(f) act sequence,
for interaction, and (h) norms of interpretation.
(d)
(g) rules
For the
purpose of this study, I defined a communicative event as a

thematic unit based on children's talk revolving around an
identifiable topic
(i.e., message content), and paid attention to
the remaining components identified by Saville-Troike while

analyzing each communicative event.
Then I identified code
switched utterances within each communicative event as

communicative acts, and coded them.
Coding of Data
As mentioned earlier in Chapter 2, I defined code-switching
as the juxtaposition of two languages between or within sentences
during a communicative event.
I coded the language switches
between sentences as intersentential code-switching and those
78
within sentences as intrasentential code-switching.
I counted a
given sentence as a code-switch when a speaker changed from one

language to another within turns, and when a speaker's sentence
was in a different language from an immediately prior sentence
uttered by another speaker; that is, change of language between
turns.
Examples of code-switched utterances are listed below:
Intersentential code-switching.
Within turns:
I coded the
second utterance of example (15) as intersentential code-switch

from Mandarin to English because Darien switched from Mandarin to
English within a single turn (no one else spoke):
(15) D:
[To Hui-Tzu] Wo kan bu dao. (I can't see.)

[To the teacher]
I CAN'T SEE, LINDA.
Between turns:
I coded the third utterance in example (16)
as Darien's intersentential code-switching from English to

Mandarin because he switched to Mandarin immediately after Judith
spoke English:
(16) Darien and Judith were playing house in Judith's home.
D:
I CAN NOT CRAWL HERE.
J:
[Misunderstanding Darien] DON'T CRY.

CRYING?
D:
Wo shi zai pa, bu shi ku!
Intrasentential code-switching.
WHY ARE YOU
(I'm crawling, not crying!)

I coded Darien's utterance
in (17) as an example of intrasentential code-switching (i.e.,

English in the Mandarin structure) because he code-switched the
English words "show" and "game" into his Mandarin utterance:
(17) Darien was demonstrating to his mother how to play a game at
home:
D:
Ni kan, wo SHOW ni yi ge GAME y o !
79
(Look, I SHOW you a GAME!)

Framework of Functional Taxonomy
After coding inter- and intrasententially code-switched
utterances,
them.
I tried to establish a systematic method to analyze
By constantly comparing each instance of code-switching
within and across communicative events, I grouped switches with

the same function together and began to code each function. I
made a list of the functions according to different taxonomies
(Appel & Muysken, 1987; Gumperz, 1982; Fantini,
Scotton,
1985, Myers-
1993) and chose to use those categories from across the
taxonomies that best characterized my data.
The classificatory
scheme primarily incorporated Appel and Muysken1s (1987)

referential function; Fantini's
(1985) unmarked verbal behavior;
Gumperz's (1982) addressee specification, quotation,

interjection, and reiteration functions; Orellana's
(1994a)
playacting function; and Myers-Scotton1s (1983, 1993) marked

code-switching, which includes code-switching to encode authority
and to exclude an ethnically different audience.
of Gumperz's functions,
I modified one
"personalization" as "emotional
involvement" to more vividly describe the nature of
Darien's
switching to his native language when he was upset.
In addition,
I adopted Stavans's (1992) negation function and De Houwer's

(1990) word play, correction, and explicit language awareness
functions.
I also created three categories: explication,
apology, and teasing in order to accurately describe the

children's language behavior (See Appendix C for a more detailed
80
account of the coding system).
81
CHAPTER 4
RESULTS
In this chapter, I first discuss the issue of language
socialization by examining mother-child dyadic interactions in
each individual child's home, including ways in which the mothers
attempted to maintain or develop their children's first language,
my own language use during interactions with them, and other
potential socializing factors.
Next I identify the general
recurrent functions of the three children's code-switching, and

the unique features of each child's code-switching.
Then I
examine the influences of different physical settings on the

children's language use.
Finally, I discuss the relationship
between their English proficiency and the type of code-switching

they produced.
Language Socialization
When discussing bilingual children's code-switching behavior,
Kwan-Terry (1992) and Lanza (1992) noted that parental input
probably was the primary contributing factor to such behavior.
In
this study, I only had the opportunity to record maternal language

use during my weekly home observations.
Thus I will focus my
attention on comparing and contrasting the children's and their

mothers' language behavior, while recognizing the possibility that
other family members' language patterns also played an equally
important role in the process of language socialization.
In
addition, I also focus on the different ways in which the focal

children's mothers attempted to maintain or develop their
82
children's first language because maternal attitudes toward the

children's native language and their subsequent efforts to
maintain it have been identified as influencing children's
language behavior (Lanza, 1992, .
Finally, due to my constant
contact with the children, I examine the potential influence of my

language use on the children's.
Language Socialization at Home
In spite of the mothers' protestations to the contrary, my
observations indicated that they did code-switch (inter- or
intrasententially) while addressing their children.
Tables 4 to 6
show how the mothers and their children used inter- and
intrasentential (with English words inserted into Mandarin
utterances) code-switching, Mandarin without code-switching and
English without code-switching during my home observations.
The
boundary for the frequency count was an individual sentence.

Utterances addressed to other participants at home (i.e.,
siblings) were not included.
Although I recorded each mother-
child dyad's interactions for an equal length of time (a total of

sixteen hours for each pair), the amount of data generated by each
pair was somewhat different.
Aaron and his mother produced
relatively fewer utterances than the other dyads, probably because

Aaron's mother had to take care of her younger son, which limited
her interactional time with Aaron.
83
Table 4
Language Patterns Used During Mother-Child Interactions at Aaron's

Home
Aaron1s Mother
n (%)
Aaron
n (%)
-English to Mandarin
7 (8%)
5 (8%)
-Mandarin to English
10(11%)
11 (18%)
30 (33%)
32 (52%)
Mandarin
40 (44%)
10(16%)
English
4 (4%)
4 (6%)
Total
91(100)
62(100)
Intersentential
Code-Switching
Intrasentential
Code-Switching3
-English in Mandarin
Note.
a There was no Mandarin in the English sentences recorded
during mother-child interactions at Aaron's home.
84
Table 5
Language Patterns Used During Mother-Child Interactions at

Darien1s Home
Darien's Mother
n (%)
Darien
n (%)
7 (8%)
5 (4%)
4 (4%)
7 (6%)
8 (9%)
84 (71%)
Mandarin
7 1 (7S%)
16 (14%)
English
3 (3%)
6 (5%)
Total
93(100%)
118(100%)
Intersentential
Code-Switching
Intrasentential
Code-Switchinga
Note.
during mother-child interactions at Darien's home.
85
Table 6
Home
Judith's Mother
n (%)
Judith
n (%)
3 (3%)
28 (21%)
3 (3%)
40(31%)
55(53%)
47(36%)
Mandarin
42(40%)
10 (8%)
English
1 (1%)
6 (5%)
Total
104(100%)
131(101%)b
Note.
Intersentential
Code-Switching
Intrasentential
Code-Switchinga
during mother-child interaction at Judith's home.
b Percentages
may not add to 100 due to rounding.

One thing that needs to be pointed out is that the children's
English utterances were usually preceded or followed by Mandarin,
either within a speaker's turn or between turns.
As a result, I
counted them as intersentential switches (i.e., from Mandarin to

English or vice versa). Given that there were very few adjacent
English utterances together, which did not involve code-switching,
the number of "English" utterances for each participant was very
low.
86
In reviewing Tables 4 to 6, one might wonder how the children

could maintain near-native proficiency in their Mandarin if they
did not usually speak it at home (16% for Aaron, 14% for Darien,
and 8% for Judith) .
It should be recalled that both Darien and
Judith spoke little English before attending the preschool.
Their
Mandarin was already well developed when they began to learn

English.
Although they did not often speak pure Mandarin during
my home observations, they frequently code-switched English words

into Mandarin utterances (52% for Aaron, 71% for Darien, and 36%
for Judith).
In other words, they inserted English content words
into Mandarin sentences.
The syntax of the code-switched
sentences was the same as that found in Mandarin (e.g., the same
word order, and the use of Mandarin function words and sentence
final particles). The children's actual use of Mandarin probably
should include their use of Mandarin and their use of
intrasentential Mandarin code-switching (68% for Aaron, 85% for
Darien, and 44% for Judith).
None of them used Mandarin in
English intrasentential code-switching at home.
My observations
also revealed that the children usually knew the Mandarin

equivalents of the English content words they used.
Language Socialization at Aaron's Home
Mother-child interactions.
Aaron's mother (AM) claimed that
Mandarin was the usual medium of communication between Aaron and

herself, and Taiwanese the usual medium of communication between
her husband and herself.
Although she did not disclose any use of
code-switching at home, my observations showed that she code
87
switched intersententially more frequently (19%) than Darien's

(12%) or Judith's mother (6%).
Her intersentential code-switching
from Mandarin to English sometimes was
associated with commands,
as demonstrated in her effort to prevent Aaron from standing too

close to the television (Shi Tou is Aaron's Chinese name) :
(18) AM:
Shi Tou! STOP! Yao kan dian shi de shihou tuihou kan.
Ni keyi kan. OK?
(Aaron, STOP! You need to move back when watching
television.
You can watch it. OK?)
I coded "stop" in (18) as an example of intersentential codeswitching from Mandarin to English because there was a pause of 2
or 3 seconds between this command and the preceding name address.
The third sentence was coded as an intersentential switch from
English to Mandarin. I coded "OK" as another intersentential code
switch from Mandarin to English due to a short pause inserted
between this word and the fourth sentence.
I considered "OK" as a
command because on the tape AM used it with a high-pitched

demanding tone and seemed to request Aaron's obedience rather than
agreement.
According to the notes in my reflective journal,
Aaron, upon hearing "OK", immediately returned to the sofa without

uttering a word. It seemed that Aaron also deemed "OK" to be a
command and knew he had to comply with it.
In fact, when AM
wanted to ask for Aa r o n 's agreement, she tended to use the

Mandarin equivalent,
"hao ma."
For example, when she wanted Aaron
to pick up his toys, she said, "Shi Tou, qu ba TOY jianqilai, hao
ma?"
(Aaron, go pick up the TOYs, ok?)
replied "NO."
To which Aaron immediately
Aaron's different reactions to "OK" and "hao ma"
further exemplify the commanding function of "OK" .
AM also code-switched intersententially from English to

Mandarin to warn Aaron of the possibility of falling when he
jumped from a bench to grab leaves on a tree in front of his
apartment:
(19) AM:
AARON! BE CAREFUL! Ni hui cong yizi shang shuai xia

lai!
(AARON! BE CAREFUL!
You'll fall down from the bench!)
On another occasion AM commanded Aaron to stop fidgeting so

that she could tie his shoelaces:
(20) AM:
Shi Tou! STOP! STAND STILL! Ni yizhi dong wo zenme

gei ni bang?
(Aaron! STOP! STAND STILL! How can I tie your shoes
if you keep moving?)
In addition to switching intersententially between English

and Mandarin, AM frequently code-switched English
intrasententially into Mandarin utterances frequently (33%) :
(21) A:
AM:
[Spotting a sticker on his younger brother's clothes]

Mama, ta de STICKER shi cong na lai de?
BABY SITTER gei ta d e .
(The BABY SITTER gave it to him.)
Aaron and his mother seemed to understand the other's message

clearly given that no requests for conversational repair were
made, either nonverbally (e.g., a frown or questioning eye) or
verbally (e.g., asking "shen me"
(What)).
Aaron's intrasentential code-switching of English into

Mandarin appeared to parallel that of his mother in example
Both code-switched "hit" and "play" into their Mandarin
utterances:
(22) AM:
[To Aaron who's hitting his younger brother]

Shi T o u ! STOP!!
(22).
89
AM:
[To Aaron's younger brother] Buyao ku.
(Don't cry.)
AM:
[To Aaron]
Ni bu ke yi HIT ta. Ni yao gen ta yi qi
PLAY.
(You mustn't HIT him. You need to PLAY with him.)
A:
Ta xian HIT wo, wo cai HIT ta de. Wo bu yao gen ta yiqi

PLAY.
(I HIT him because he HIT me first. I don't want to
PLAY with him.)
However, it is difficult to tell who was modeling for whom in the

previous example.
A natural assumption is that Aaron's mother
modeled for her son this code-switching behavior.
However, there
also is the possibility that she used Aaron's preferred language

patterns to interact with him.
The next instance is an example of AM's modeling the code
switched language for her son.
AM revealed in an interview that
she taught Aaron to recognize the word "rewind" so that he could

operate the video cassette recorder when he wanted to watch the
video.
In example (23), she code-switched this word into her
Mandarin utterances and Aaron followed suit:

(23) A:
Mama, wo xiangyao kan LION KING, hao bu hao?

(Mom,can I watch the LION KING video?)
AM: Ni qu ba ta REWIND.
Zhiyao WIND yidiandian jiuhao l e .
(You go ahead REWIND it. Just REWIND it a little bit.)
A:
Wo xiang
REWIND dao zuiqianmian. Congtou kaishi kan,
hao bu hao?
(I want to REWIND it to the very beginning.
Can I
watch it from the very beginning?)
When I asked Aaron why he used the English word "rewind" in

his Mandarin utterances, he replied, "meiyou weishenme, women dou
zheyang shuo a!"
(No reason.
We just speak this way!) I further
inquired what he meant by "we", and he answered,
"wo han wo mama
90
yal"
(me and my momI)

Maternal efforts to maintain the first language and responses
to the child's code-switching.
Aaron's mother took Aaron to visit
Taiwan every summer and winter so that "ta buhui wangji Taiwan"
(he would not forget about Taiwan).
In addition, Aaron's mother
purchased different kinds of educational audiotapes for her son to

listen to in Mandarin every day.
When I asked her to comment on
whether Aaron's intrasentential code-switching affected his

acquisition of either language, AM replied that she hadn't really
thought about it, but that she didn't think that it would be a
problem for him:
Muqian wiezhi shi mei you xiang na me dou. Ta ruguo hui
Taiwan de hua, dao shi hou dou shi jiang Zhongwen de huan
jing, ta jiu bian cheng jiang Zhongwen la. Wo xiang ruguo
weilai wo men zhende zai zheli gongzuo, ta yiding hui zai
jiang Yingwen de huanjing, na wo juede ta dao shi hou jiang
Yingwen jiu hui bian cheng hen chuen zheng de Yingwen, jui bu
hui Zhong-Ying jiaza.
Keshi ta hui lai hai shi huigen wo
menjiang Zhongwen. Wo shi jue de mei you xiang guo na me
duo. Yeshi yao kan huanjing la.
(So far I haven't thought about that. If he goes back to
Taiwan, he'll pick up Mandarin quickly.
If we stay here
permanently, he'll be immersed in an all-English language
environment.
In that case, he'll be able to speak standard
English and won't mix it up with Mandarin. He'll also learn
to speak Mandarin
since we all speak Mandarin at home.
I
feel that I haven't thought much about this problem.
It all
depends on the language environment.)
Language Socialization at Darien's Home
Darien's mother (DM) code
switched less frequently than Aaron's mother (9% for

intrasentential code-switching, and 12% for intersentential codeswitching).
During the mother-child interactions, she frequently
insisted that Darien repeat what he had said with intrasentential
91
code-switching in Mandarin before she would respond.
Of the 93
utterances recorded during DM's interactions with Darien, 14

utterances (15%) were such requests.
In example (24), Darien
asked his mother about a scene he saw on TV:

(24) D:
Mama, weishenme WITCH changge de shihou dou ba SHOES

TAKE OFF a?
(Mommy, why did WITCHes TAKE OFF their SHOES when
they sang?)
DM:
Ni yong Zhongwen congxin jiang yi bian.

(Speak it in Mandarin.)
D:
Mama, weishenme wupo changge de shihou dou ba xiezi

tuodiao a?
(Mommy, why did witches take off their shoes when they
sang?)
In another example, Darien wanted to tell his mother his true

identity:
(25) D:
Mama, ni
DARIEN.
(Mom, do
I'm REAL
zhi dao wo REALLY AM shenme ma? Wo REALLY AM

Wo shi REAL DARIEN. Wo zhishi PRETEND ROBIN.
you know who I REALLY AM?
I REALLY AM DARIEN.
DARIEN.
I only PRETEND to be ROBIN.)
DM:
Shenme yi si?
(What do you mean?)
D:
[Giving Mandarin translation] Wo shi zhende DARIEN.

zhishi jiazhuang cheng ROBIN.
(I am real DARIEN.
I only pretend to be ROBIN.)
Wo
Darien's intrasentential code-switching "Wo REALLY AM DARIEN"

seemed odd because it is unlikely that Mandarin-English speaking
adults would produce such a code-switched utterance.
It might be
that he constructed this utterance.

In example (26) , DM and her son were reading "The Very Hungry
Caterpillar", a storybook frequently read by school teachers and
recommended to DM for family reading.
This example demonstrates
that Darien learned some of his code-switched terms from school.
92
As can be seen in the following exchanges, DM was not consistent

in her request for Darien's demonstration of his knowledge in
Mandarin for each English term he used:
(26) D:
[Pointing to an apple tree}
DM:
Shenme shu?
(What tree?)
D:
Pinguoshu.
(Apple tree.)
DM:
Pinguoshu shang you shenme?
D:
Niao (Bird), BIRD.
DM:
Jige pinguo?
APPLE TREE!
(What's on the apple tree?)
(How many apples?)
D:
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR.
DM:
Jige?
D:
Si ge.
DM:
Hai you ne?
D:
BUTTERFLY.
DM:
Zai nali?
(How many?)
(Four.)
(What else?)
(Where?)
D:
Zheli.
(Here.)
DM:
Hudie shi shenme biancheng de?(What turns into a

butterfly?)
D:
CATERPILLAR. Ta chi zhemeduo dongxi, zhuzai yige COCOON

li. Youyitian kiu biancheng BUTTERFLY feizuo le.
(CATERPILLAR. He ate so many things and lived in a
COCOON. One day he turned into a BUTTERFLY and flew
away.)
DM:
CATERPILLAR shi shenme?
D:
Maomaochong.
(What is CATERPILLAR?)
(Caterpillar.)
One of the few occasions in which DM code-switched was when

she read a storybook about a pirate and wanted to explain two
terms to Darien. Upon hearing his mother's Mandarin translations,
Darien immediately corrected them.
He deemed laoshu to be the
93
equivalent of MOUSE rather than RAT, and qianq to be the

translation of GUN instead of PISTOL.
DM switched
intrasententially in order to explain the differences between RAT

and MOUSE, as well as GUN and PISTOL:
(laoshu means mouse, qianq
means gun):
(27) DM:
[Reading the lines] "A RAT IS COMING OUT." Ran hou

laoshu j iu pao chu lai. (And the mouse is coming out.)
D:
Laoshu shi MOUSE!
(The English for "laoshu" is MOUSE!)
DM:
RAT shi zhu zai waimian de, MOUSE shi zhu zai jiali de.
(RAT lives outside of a house. MOUSE lives inside of a
house.)
DM:
"THE PIRATES HAD PISTOLS IN THEIR HANDS." Naxie haidao

shouli dou nazhi qianq. (Those pirates had guns in
their hands.)
D:
Qiang shi GUN, bushi PISTOL.

is GUN, not PISTOL.)
DM:
PISTOL ye jiao qiang.

Ta shi lingwai yizhong qiang.
(PISTOLis also called "qiang". It is a different kind
of "qiang".)
(The English for "qiang"

When asked why she frequently
requested Darien to repeat his intrasentential code-switching in

Mandarin, DM said that she feared that her son's Mandarin might
disappear once he started acquiring English, and he would lag
behind other children when they returned to Taiwan:
Yinwei women yihou yao hui Taiwan, xianzai xuyao ba tade
Zhongwen dizi dahao, yimian huiqu gen bu shang.
(Since we are going back to Taiwan in the future, Darien
needs to practice speaking and writing Mandarin more, or he
c a n 't catch up with kids back home.)
In her attempt to maintain Darien's Mandarin, DM sent her son
to a Sunday Chinese school to learn to read and write the Chinese
94
phonetic symbols.
Despite DM's conscious efforts, differences in
DM and Darien's speech patterns are obvious.
DM's speech pattern
was usually in Mandarin (76%), but her son's was characterized by

intrasententially code-switched utterances(71%).
Although DM
code-switched infrequently, she did not appear to discourage

Darien from switching languages, as long as he knew the Mandarin
equivalents for most of the English he spoke.
The lack of overt
opposition to Darien's intrasentential code-switching might be

construed as a tacit recognition of such behavior.
Language Socialization at Judith's Home
Judith's mother (JM) code
switched English words intrasententially into her Mandarin

utterances frequently (See Table 6, 53%), as exemplified in the
following conversation (Yuan Yuan is Judith's Chinese name):
(28) JM:
Yuan Yuan, zuo hao! Bu yao UPSIDE DOWN ma!

(Judith, sit up! Don't sit with your head UPSIDE
DOWN!)
J:
[Laughing]
UPSIDE DOWN!
UPSIDE DOWN!
JM:
Yuan Yuan, wo shuo le! Bu yao UPSIDE DOWN a!!

(Judith, I told you once! Don't sit with your head
UPSIDE DOWN!!)
JM and her daughter tended to code switch the same terms

intrasententially into Mandarin when communicating with each
other.
Example (29) occurred when JM asked Judith to demonstrate
to Darien how to play a computer game:

(29) JM:
J:
Yuan Yuan, ni qu SHOW DARIEN zenme wan nage GAME y a !

(Judith, why don't you SHOW DARIEN how to play that
GAME?)
Wo lai SHOW ni zhege GAME.
GAME.)
(Let me SHOW you this
95
Their pattern of code-switching paralleled each other again

when the mouse failed to function properly:
(30) J:
Yi, zhege zenme bu MOVE le?

(Hmm, how come this mouse doesn't MOVE?)
JM:
Yuan Yuan, zenme le?
(Judith, what's wrong?)
J:
Zhe ge bu MOVE le.
JM:
Wo lai kankan. Zenme bu MOVE le?

(Let me see. How come it doesn't MOVE?)
(This doesn't MOVE.)
However, it is difficult to ascertain who was modeling the code

switching behavior for whom.
In example
(31) , JM code-switched "juice" intrasententially
into Mandarin:
(31) J:
Wo hao ke.
JM:
(I'm thirsty.)
Ni yao bu yao he JUICE? Wo gei ni dao.

(Do you want some JUICE? I'll get you some.)
When I asked JM why she said JUICE instead of its Mandarin

equivalent guozhi, she replied "I don't know."
After pondering
for a while, she explained that perhaps she was just

recapitulating her daughter's usual use of this English word.
Her explanation seemed to suggest that she was imitating her
daughter's language use.
JM's use of intersentential code-switching was infrequent
(6%).
She sometimes responded to her daughter's requests with
simple English utterances:

(32) J:
JM:
Mama!
(Mom!)
YES?
Judith's speech patterns were characterized by
96
intrasentential code-switching (36%), followed by intersentential

code-switching from Mandarin to English (31%).
It is difficult
to find an interaction at Judith's home in which Judith spoke

only Mandarin.
One of the rare occasions took place when Judith
taught her mother to differentiate two Korean twin sisters:

(33) JM:
Na yige shi Jee Wan, Na yige shi Jeong Wan?

(Which is Jee Wan? Which is Jeong Wan?)
J:
Chuang qunzi de jiushi Jee Wan. Jeong Wan jiu shi nage
yifu de.
(The one in the dress is Jee Wan, and the
other one in clothes [pants] is Jeong Wan.)
JM:
Ni zenme fen de chulai?

apart?)
J:
Wo zhidao tamen mingzi a I
(How can you tell them

(I know their names!)

JM revealed that she was the only
person in her family who endeavored to maintain Mandarin at home.

In addition to speaking Mandarin, during her last visit to China
she purchased the textbooks used in primary schools and taught
Judith the PinYin system (a phonetic system used in China).
She
also taught Judith to recognize and write simple Chinese

characters. Judith's father, according to JM's account, usually
conversed with his daughter in whatever language she used.
If
Judith spoke English to him, he responded in the same language.

Margie, Judith's older sister who had been attending kindergarten
for 4 months, sometimes spoke English with her or used
intrasentential code-switching.
JM admitted in an interview that
she could foresee that her daughters would one day be completely
Americanized:
97
Women zhe liang ge yihou dou shi Meiguoren le I Tamen bu

xihuan chifan, zui xihuan chi shenme HAMBURGER la, PIZZA de.
Dui Zhongguo de jieri, xiang cunjie la dou mei shenme
gainian.
Fan dao shi Meiguo de jieri, xiang EASTER,
HALLOWEEN d e , tamen zui
jide l e .
(My two girls one day will become totally Americanized.
They
don't like rice. HAMBURGERS and PIZZA are their favorite
food.
They know more about EASTER and HALLOWEEN than Chinese
Lunar New Y e a r .)
Mv Own Language Use
As a researcher,
I was aware of the possible influences of
my language behavior on the focal children's, and was

particularly careful with my choice of language during my
interactions with them. Despite my conscious effort to speak
Mandarin to the children, I could not avoid code-switching some
English terms into my Mandarin utterances
code-switching).
(i.e., intrasentential
Table 7 shows my code-switching during
interactions with the children.

during the following situations:
I usually used code-switching

(a) when the topics revolved
around popular cartoon figures (e.g., Power Rangers, Pocahontas,

etc.), and some ethnic food (e.g., pizza, macaroni and cheese)
(4%) ; and (b) when I checked their understanding of certain
English terms used in their preceding utterances
(5%).
For
example, when I heard Darien use "purple" in an otherwise

Mandarin utterance,
color is PURPLE) .
I asked him "PURPLE shi shen me yan se"
(What
There were also a few slips of the tongue
(2%)
in which I code-switched English intrasententially into a

Mandarin sentence while addressing a Korean-dominant boy in my
apartment.
Other than those previously-mentioned situations,
usually addressed the children in Mandarin when I talked with
98
them, regardless of the physical settings, participants, or

topics.
I also spoke English in the children's presence at school
(1%), but the message was usually directed at other non-Mandarin
speaking children.
For example, when serving snack during snack
time, I communicated with other children in English.

addressing one of the focal children,
But when
I immediately switched
to Mandarin.
Table 7
Mv Language Use During Interactions With the Focal Children
Hui-Tzu
n (%)
Intersentential
Code-Switching
2 (1%)
3 (1%)
Intrasentential
Code-Switching3
27 (11%)
Mandarin
212(87%)
English15
Total
244 (100%)
Note.
a There was no Mandarin in the English sentence. b English
utterances were either preceded or followed by Mandarin utterances

and thus were counted as intersentential code-switching rather
99
than English.
Other Potential Socializing Factors
One potential factor which might contribute to the children's
code-switching behavior was paternal speech patterns.
AM and DM
claimed that their husbands, like themselves, always spoke

Mandarin to Aaron and Darien at home.
However, it was unclear if
their husbands also provided an accepting environment in which

their sons could use code-switching without receiving any
discouragement.
With regard to Judith's father, presumably he
accepted Judith's code-switching because he talked to Judith in

whatever language she used.
Other possible factors that could have influenced the
children's code-switching include sibling language, peer language
and personal preference. For example, Judith's older sister might
have modeled the use of English at home for Judith.
With regard
to peer language, it should be recalled that the children spent a

considerable amount of time together because their mothers took
turns looking after each another's children after school.
It is
possible that they learned the code-switching pattern while

interacting with their friends.
For example, when I asked Darien
why he frequently code-switched English into his Mandarin

utterances, he responded, "Wo xue AARON de" (I imitated AARON) .
Personal preference for English also played an important role in
the children's language behavior. For instance, Darien often told
me that he liked speaking English.
Judiths mother told me that
Judith liked to speak English more than Mandarin.
100
Finally, the dominance of English in the larger society and

the children's daily exposure to the use of English in the media
and at school probably influenced their code-switching.
The
influence of media language was found in example (24) in which

Darien used some terms he learned from watching television.
Example (26) also indicated that Darien learned some of his codeswitched terms at school.
Summary
Examination of the language socialization patterns revealed
that it was unclear if the children were modeling for their
mothers or vice versa.
Differences in the mother-child code-
switching patterns suggest that other factors besides mothers1

input also played important roles in influencing the children's
language behavior.
These potential factors include maternal
attitudes towards their children's code-switching, the children's

language preference and their motivations to speak English.
addition,
In
the influence of paternal and sibling language was not
documented in this study.
Peer language patterns also may have
influenced the children's code-switching.
Also, it is highly
likely that the use of English in the media and at the preschool,
and the dominant language status of English in the larger society
contributed to the focal children's language patterns. Finally,
the child's own creation can not be underestimated.
Darien's
code-switched utterance "Wo REALLY AM DARIEN" in example
(25)
suggested that the child might construct his own speech patterns.
101
General Functions of the Focal

Children's Code-Switching
A total of 16 general functions
(see Table 8) were
identified for the children's code-switching.

were subsumed under two categories:
conversational code-switching.
These functions
Situational and
Situational code-switching refers
to code-switching that reflects a change in the characteristics

of participants
(i.e., their physical appearance, ethnicities and
language backgrounds) and topics.
Conversational code-switching,
on the other hand, refers to code-switching that is not due to a

change in the characteristics of participants and topics, but
rather reflects a speaker's stylistic
(McClure, 1977, 1981)
and
other intentional purposes.

Of the 383 code-switched utterances, only 118 utterances
(31%) are examples of situational code-switching, whereas 265
utterances
(69%) are examples of conversational code-switching.
Table 8 shows the type of switching involved (intra- or

intersentential)
and directionality of switch (from English to
Mandarin or the reverse order) of each function.

following section,
In the
I will first discuss the functions classified
as situational code-switching, and then those classified as

conversational code-switching.
Each function will be
substantiated with appropriate examples.
102
Table 8
The General Functions of the Focal Children's Code-Switching
Function
Inter
Intra
sentential sentential
62
16
56
15
112
29
X 313
X
X
20
14
5
4
X 313
15
17
4
4
21
12
3
5
3
1
xab
Situational
-Addressee
Code-Switching specification
-Referential
Conversational -Unmarked
x313
Code-Switching code-switching
Metalinguistic
Awareness
-Correction
-Explicit
language
awareness
x3*
Commun ica t ive

Strategies
-Explication
-Reiteration
X 315
Message Form
-Playacting
-Word Play
-Quotation
x3
x3*
x3
Discourse
Routines
-Interj ection
-Negation
-Apology
Intentional
Code-switching
-Teasing
-Encoding
authority
-Excluding
audience
x3
x3
x3
20
17
7
5
4
1
x13
x13
2
3
1
1
x13
Total
383
Note. Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding.
a=
99
103
intersentential code-switching from Mandarin to English,

b=intersentential code-switching from English to Mandarin.
Intrasentential code-switching almost always takes the form of
switching English into Mandarin utterances except for switching
for word play in which very occasionally Mandarin was switched
into English utterances.
Two types of situational code-switching were identified:
addressee specification (16%) and referential function (15%).
The former was associated with a change in participants' language
backgrounds, and the latter usually occurred with topics about
popular cartoon characters, American festivals, and various
ethnic foods.
Gumperz
(1982) considered addressee specification
to be a type of conversational code-switching.
The language
switch to address a new addressee(usually with the same language

background)
seemed more related to the speaker's intention of
avoiding the necessity of a later message, such as "I'm not

talking to the previous addressee anymore.
someone else now." In contrast,
I'm talking to
the children's code-switching for
addressee specification usually occurred when they wanted to

address someone whose language background was different from the
previous addressee.
In other words, their code-switching for
addressee specification was primarily in response to a change in

their new interlocutor's language background.
Of the sixty-two
instances of addressee specification, there were only 5

exceptions in which Judith code-switched between English and
104
Mandarin to address her older sister and her mother at home.
As
a result, I classified the children's code-switching for

addressee specification as an example of situational codeswitching.
Addressee Specification
The boys usually code-switched in order to address a
particular audience.
This code-switching demonstrated their
awareness of and sensitivity to their speakers' language

backgrounds. It also displayed their bilingual competency.
Both
Aaron and Darien tended to associate English with non-Mandarin

speaking people and usually requested that others follow their
language rule.
Aaron even reprimanded me for violating the rule
when I accidentally spoke Mandarin to Guk Hun (K), a Koreandominant boy at my apartment:
(34) K:
[Showing a story book full of insects to Hui-Tzu]
H:
Oh, YOU LIKE BUGS? Ni xi huan BUGS ma?

(Do you like bugs?)
A:
[To Hui-Tzu]
Bu yao gen ta jiang Zhongwen la! Ta ting
bu dong.
(Don't speak Mandarin to him. He doesn't understand it.)
Aaron also told Judith not to speak English to me during the

school's snack time:
(35) J:
JUICE!
JUICE!
H:
Ni yao shuo shen me ya?
(What should you say?)
A:
Yao shuo PLEASE.
J:
JUICE, PLEASE.
A:
[To Judith]
Bu yao gen ta shuo Yingwen.
Ta ting de
dong Zhongwen.
Shuo Zhongwen jiu keyi le.
(You don't need to speak English to her. She can
(You need to say PLEASE.)
105
understand Mandarin. You only need to speak Mandarin to

her.)
Aaron's instruction of his language rules to both Judith and
me demonstrated his language differentiation.
Darien also disclosed a similar rule when he questioned my
misuse of Mandarin with Guk Hun at my apartment:
(3 6) H:
Guk Hun, ni yao bu yao pai FLOWER?

(Guk Hun, do you want to do the FLOWER puzzle?)
D:
Ni zen me jiang "GUK HUN, ni yao bu yao pai FLOWER'?

(How come you say "GUK HUN, do you want to do the FLOWER
puzzle" in Mandarin to Guk HUN?)
H:
[Following Darien's advice]
YOU WANT THE FLOWER?
Unlike Aaron, Darien did not directly condemn my use of Mandarin

with Guk Hun.
He only challenged me with an indirect question,
which was socially appropriate given his status.

Although Aaron and Darien demonstrated clear awareness of
who spoke what language, and what they considered to be
appropriate within a multilingual speech community, linguistic
distinction was not completely manifested in their performance.
For example, Aaron once addressed Guk Hun in Mandarin,
yao SHARE.
share.)
Guk Hun, YOU NEED TO SHARE"
"Guk Hun,
(Guk Hun, you need to
But he was quick to remedy his slip of the tongue with
an immediate self-repair in English.

A similar situation also happened to Darien who was talking
to me at the school1s art table. Darien seemed to remain in the
thought train of Mandarin when speaking to Barbara. Once he
realized that he was talking to the monolingual assistant
teacher, he felt self-conscious about making such an embarrassing
106
mistake:
(37) D:
[To Hui-Tzu]
Ni zhi dao ma? Wo hui hua yi ge HOUSE.
(You know what?
I can draw a HOUSE.)
H:
Zen de?
(Really?)
B:
[Thinking that Darien was talking to her] Umm?
D:
[Turning to Barbara]
Wo hui hua HOUSE.
(I can draw a HOUSE.)
B:
[With her eyes wide open]
PARDON ME?
D:
[Covering his forehead with the back of his left hand]

I CAN DRAW...A...HOUSE.
The non-verbal communication Darien demonstrated by placing the

back of his left hand to his forehead indicated his
embarrassment.
In addition, his faltering English, as opposed to
his usually fluent production of such sentence patterns, was

further proof of his discomfort with such an obvious mistake.
Although there were a few instances of performance errors
which did not match perfectly with the boys' bilingual linguistic
awareness,
the frequency was extremely low.
In fact, the
preceding examples were the only three incidents of unintentional

mismatch between participants and their language backgrounds in
the available corpus.
Despite Aaron and Darien's usual insistence on the oneperson one-language rule, they were sometimes flexible in their
code selection if this type of flexibility first was exhibited by
their conversational partners.
For example, when both Aaron and
Darien wanted to join me in a Bingo game at school, I spoke in

English with the intention of inviting all the children playing
in the middle room.
Aaron and Darien, upon hearing the question,
107
followed my lead and answered in English.
Later when I
discovered that only the two Mandarin-speaking boys wanted to

play bingo, I intuitively switched back to Mandarin, and the boys
switched accordingly.
The subsequent bingo game was mainly in
Mandarin until the boys answered my question in English because

they did not know the Mandarin term for "purple".
When Darien
raised a question in English, Aaron switched accordingly to

provide an answer:
(38) H:
A:
WHO WANTS TO PLAY COLOR BINGO?

I WANT TO PLAY!
D:
ME, TOO!
H:
Women shangci you wan de a! Wo lai jiao pai.

(We played this game before.
I'll deal the cards.)
A:
Yao xian xi pai.

(Need to shuffle the cards first.)
D:
Ran hou zai shuo.
H:
Di yi ge.
Zhe shi shen me?
(First one. What's this?)
A & D : PURPLE, wo y o u .
(And then you call out the cards.)
(I have o n e .)
H:
Ju se de san jiao xing.
D:
Wo you!
A:
NO, THAT'S RED!
(I got one!)
(An orange triangle.)

IS THIS ORANGE?
One might wonder why Aaron told Judith not to speak English
to me in example
(38).
(35), but spoke English to me himself in example
One possible explanation might be that I did not address
Judith in English first.

speak English to me.
Therefore, there was no need for her to
But in example
(38), I spoke English first,
although not directly to him, so he demonstrated his flexibility
108
by switching to English.
When both non-Mandarin-speaking and Mandarin-speaking people
were in the boys' vicinity, they code-switched freely to direct
their messages to a specific audience:
example (3 9) occurred at
my apartment, and example (40) took place in Judith's house (G=

Gabi, an English monolingual):
(3 9) A:
[To
Guk Hun]
NO!
NO!
A:
[To Hui-Tzu]Ta yao gei wo

pai, wo bu gei ta.
(He wanted to help me, but I don't need his help.)
H:
Na ni yao gen ta jiang.
A: [To Guk Hun]

HELP.
(4 0) D:
G:
[To
Gabi]
(Then you need to tell him.)
I DON'T NEED HELP, GUK HUN.

I DON'T
I DON'T NEED
EAT YOU. I EAT CROCODILE.
I WANNA BE A LION.
AND YOU KNOW WHO. . .AND YOU KNOW WHAT
LIONS DO TO CROCODILES? THEY EAT CROCODILES.
SO GET ON
THE FLOOR TO BE A CROCODILE.
LIKE THIS.
D:
[To Gabi] I WANNA BE A DOGGIE.

[Ten times]
I DON'T KILL YOU.
I KILL CROCODILE.
WOOF!
D:
[To Judith]
Wo bu shi yao ni men de. Wozhi shi yao
CROCODILE.
(I won't bite you girls.
I only bite CROCODILES.)
D:
[To Gabi]
I WANNA BE A BABY DOGGIE.
Judith sometimes followed the language rule and switched to

Mandarin to address me despite her preference for English.
This
occurred when Judith and Gabi were building Lego animals together
during the school's free-play time:
(41) G:
LOOK AT THIS SHEEP.
J:
I GOT THIS ONE.
I GOT THE BIGGEST HOUSE!
G:
YOU'RE A CRAZY LITTLE GIRL.
J:
I DON'T SINK [sic] SO!
HEY, LOOK AT THIS WINDOW!
109
J:
[To Hui-Tzu who's sitting beside her]

Ni kan, hai you yi ge CHAIR zai zher.
(Look, there's a CHAIR here.)
Referential Function
Appel and Muysken (1987) defined the referential function to
be when a speaker cannot find the appropriate expressions in the
base language and switches to another language.
Similar
bililngual adults, the children also code-switched for this

function. Referential function ranked third in the children's
code-switching (15%). The children used referential codeswitching when they did not know a corresponding Mandarin term.
Their use of this function usually was related to culture-bound
topics.
The trio always (see Table 8) code-switched English
intrasententially into otherwise Mandarin utterances while

talking about American festivals
(Christmas, Easter, and
Halloween), popular cartoon figures
(Power Ranger, Spiderman,
Pocahontas, Barbie, Tinkle Bell, etc.), or various ethnic foods

(pizza, cheese, macaroni, and salsa) because there was no exact
equivalent in Mandarin.
The following two events occurred in
Aaron's
and Judith's homes respectively:
(42)
Wo yao dang POWER RANGER. Wo yao dang POWER RANGER lai

da SPIDER MONSTER.
(I want to be a POWER RANGER.
I want to be a POWER
RANGER.
I want to be a POWER RANGER to beat up SPIDER
MONSTERS.)
A:
D:
Wo shi SPIDERMAN!
(I'm SPIDERMAN!)
A:
Wo yao dang POWER RANGER lai da SPIDER MONSTER.

(I want to be a POWER RANGER to beat up SPIDER
MONSTERS.)
D:
Wo xiang dang SPIDERMAN.
SPIDERMAN shi hao ren.
110
(I want to be SPIDERMAN.
(43) J:
D:
SPIDERMAN is a good guy.)
DARIEN, wo jie jie ji sui hen chang de, xiang POCAHONTAS

na yang d e .
(DARIEN, my sister once had long hair like
POCAHONTAS'S .)
SWAN PRINCESS de toufa ye hen chang.
also has long hair.)
(SWAN PRINCESS
As shown in Table 8, fourteen functions were identified as
conversational code-switching. Those functions that are closely
related were collapsed into one broad category.
Therefore,
correction and explicit language awareness were listed under the

category of metalinguistic awareness because both types of
metalinguistic behavior "can only stem from a growing awareness
[of language]"
(Clark, 1978, p. 25). Explication and reiteration
were subsumed under communicative strategies on the grounds that

both are instrumental to a speaker's message transmission. Play
acting, word play, and quotation functions were collapsed into
the category of message forms because these types of codeswitching involved language forms "distinct from that used in
normal conversation"
(Fantini, 1985, p. 59) .
Negation,
interjection, and apology were discussed under the category of

discourse routines due to their fixed forms. Teasing, encoding
authority, and excluding an ethnically different audience were
discussed under the category of intentional code-switching
because these switches were not in accordance with the social
norm and were sometimes used to reestablish the existing role
relationships with one's conversational partners.
I l l
Unmarked Code-Switching
Table 8 demonstrates that the type of code-switch that
occurred most frequently among the three children was unmarked
code-switching (29%) .
Fantini (1985) also documented this type
of code-switching during observations of his son's language

acquisition.
According to him, unmarked code-switching occurs
when "the purpose of a speech act was 'normal' communication and

exchange of information"
(p. 59).
In other words, unmarked code
switching mainly serves the function of transmitting information

among these bilingual children. Darien used more unmarked code
switching than Aaron and Judith.
This might be due to the fact
that Darien used more intrasentential code-switching than the

other two children, which, in turn, might be attributed to his
relatively lower English proficiency.
The children's unmarked code-switching usually took the form
of English words in the Mandarin structure or intersentential
code-switching.
These switches often occurred when the topics
revolved around school topics or activities, such as animals,

colors, numbers, fruit, snack, dates and days.
The following two
communicative events in examples (44a) and (44b), which

consecutively occurred at Judith's home, are exemplary of
unmarked code-switching. In the first communicative event, my
initial reaction to Judith's utterance was construed as
inattention rather than inability to comprehend the English word
"pocket" and thus failed to elicit a response in Mandarin.
It
was not until I explicitly inquired in Mandarin what she meant by
112
pocket that Judith switched to Mandarin, demonstrating her

knowledge of POCKET in Mandarin (koudai means pocket):
(44a)J:
[Showing a front pocket on her bib overall skirt]

Zhe li you POCKET!
(I've got a POCKET here!)
H:
Eh?
J:
POCKET, I SAID.
H:
Shen me shi POCKET?
J:
Koudai m a ! (Pocket, of course!)
In the
(What is POCKET?)
second communicative event, Judith used
English and
Mandarin versions of RABBIT
to attract Darien's attention.
both the
(xiaobaitumeans rabbit)
As displayed in the very last
sentence, Darien also knew the Mandarin equivalent for HOPPING

BUNNY RABBIT:
(44b)J:
[To Darien] DARIEN, ni kan xiaobaitu RABBIT.

(DARIEN, look at the little RABBIT.)
D:
Wo dang BUNNY RABBIT. [Hopping forward] HOP, HOP, HOP!

(I play the BUNNY RABBIT.)
H:
Ni
D:
Wo zai xue xiaobaitu tiao.

(I'm imitating a rabbit hopping.)
zai zuo shenme?
(What are you doing?)
The two consecutive communicative events showed that both

Judith and Darien knew how to say the code-switched terms in both
languages.
Therefore, I coded these switches as unmarked rather
than referential code-switching.

Another instance of their normal communication behavior
(i.e., unmarked code-switching) occurred between Aaron and Darien
at Aaron's home.
In this testing-like situation, Darien
sometimes answered Aaron's questions in English without a
113
Mandarin counterpart
(i.e., brown bear, and yellow), similar to
the situation in which he answered the monolingual teacher's

questions; other times he supplied answers in both languages
(i.e., brown and pink), reminiscent of some of the occasions in
which he answered his mother's questions.
The underlined words
are Mandarin equivalents for preceding English words:

(45) A:
Ni gen wo shuo zhe shi shenme yanse.

(Tell me what color it is.)
D:
BROWN BEAR a!
A:
Zhege zhong shi shenme yanse?

(What color is this clock?)
D:
Umm, YELLOW.
A:
Ni buxing luan zhua. Ni meiyou shuodui, wo buyao

gei ni fan.
(Don't turn the page yet. You didn't say it right.
I d o n 't let you turn the page.)
D:
(BROWN BEAR, of course!)
BROWN, shi kafeise.
(It'sbrown.)
A:Hao, na zhege PIANO shi shenme yan

(Good, what color is the PIANO?)
D:
PINK, fenhonase.
A:
Dui.
Zhe shi shenme yanse?
(Yes. What color is this?)
D:
Huangse.
se?
(Pink.)
(Yellow.)
Subsequent observations revealed that the only rainbow color

(red, yellow, pink, green, orange, purple, and blue) the focal
children did not know in Mandarin was zise (purple).Aaron once
asked me "Shen me shi zise"
(What does zise mean?) when
overheard me saying the word.

Mandarin
to purple
he
Judith was able to give all the
equivalents for colors butstopped suddenly when

(see example 15).
Dariencovered his eyes toshow
it came
his
114
embarrassment when he did not know how to say purple in Mandarin.

Example
(46) is an illustration of Aaron's and Darien's
bilingual competence in identifying animals in an English picture

book at my apartment. Darien knew the Mandarin and English
equivalents for CHICKEN and PIG, and Aaron knew the Mandarin
counterpart of COW:
(46) D:
[Pointing to the pictures] Zhe shi CHICKEN. Zhe shi

CHICKEN. Zhe liangge dou shi xiaoii.
(This is a CHICKEN.
This is a CHICKEN.
These two are
both chickens.)
H:
Zhe shi shenme?
(What is this?)
A:
Zhe shi yige niu.
D:
[Pointing to a pig] P I G , zhu.
COW.
(This is a cow.)
(Pig.)
As revealed in an informal interview with the three

children, they knew almost all the names of popular domestic
animals in both languages
(cat, dog, mouse, bird, fish, turtle,
frog, snake, pig, chicken, sheep, horse, cow, and squirrel)

zoo animals
and
(bear, seal, elephant, giraffe, alligator, zebra,
lion, tiger, vulture, dolphin, whale, shark, wolf, and fox).

they only knew the English names for some exotic animals,
But
such as
llama and tapir.

Metalinguistic Awareness
The children also demonstrated their metalinguistic
awareness by code-switching to correct each other's mistakes
(5%)
or commenting explicitly on the language they were using (4%).

De Houwer (1990) also reported that a 3-year-old Dutch-English
speaking girl used code-switching to correct her mother and the
researcher.
115
Correction.
The children tended to code-switch to rectify
what they perceived as a mistake in English phonology,
semantics,
syntax and even pragmatics. Of the 20 corrections, Aaron made 7,

Darien made 7, and Judith made 6. Aaron made 2 phonological
corrections, 2 semantic corrections, 2 pragmatic corrections, and
1 syntactic correction.
semantic corrections.
Judith made 2 phonological and 4

Darien, on the other hand, made 4
phonological and 3 semantic corrections.

The types of corrections the children made tended to reflect
their varying English proficiencies.
Aaron, the most advanced in
terms of English proficiency, was the only one who made a

syntactic correction.
Judith, whose English proficiency was not
as advanced as Aaron in terms of grammar and pronunciation,

tended to focus on correcting the semantic meanings of words.
Darien, on the other hand, tended to focus on phonological
corrections, which is not too surprising given his clear English
pronunciation
(between levels 3 and 4 at the beginning of my
study, and level 4 at the end of the study (see Table 2 in

Chapter 3) . The following instances demonstrated each child's
conviction of what an English word should sound like.
In example
home.
(47), Aaron and Darien were playing at Aaron's
No sooner had Darien switched to Mandarin to explain what
he meant by "gunk" than Aaron immediately corrected his friend's

incorrect pronunciation.
Darien was able to repeat the correct
pronunciation upon being instructed.
However, it was difficult
for a four-year-old to instantaneously eradicate his
116
"developmental forms"
(Lindfors, 1987, p. 3), especially when he
was concentrating on conveying meanings.
Darien's subsequent
mispronunciation somewhat annoyed Aaron, who insisted on

correcting this unacceptable mistake until Darien finally deleted
the unwarranted /k/ sound:
(47) A:
PEW! PEW!
PEW!
Huai dan dou bei wo da si l e .
(I killed all the bad guys.)
D:
Wo jia li ye you yi
(I got a GUNK [sic]
A:
Ni jia you shen me?
ge GUNK, ke yi da MONSTER.
at home, and it can kill MONSTERS.)
(What do you have?)
D : GUNK a .
A:
Shenme?
D:
GUNK!
(What?)
A:
GUNK shi shen me?(What is "GUNK"?)
D:
Shou qian a!
A:
Shenme GUNK, GUN la!
D:
GUN. Wo jia de GUNK ke yi da MONSTER.

(GUN. My GUNK can
kill MONSTERs.)
A:
Ni zen me you
shuo GUNK, shi GUN la!
GUNK again.
It's GUN!)
D:
GUN.
A:
Dui.
(Gun,
of course!)
(What GUNK, GUN!)
(Howcome
you said
(Yes.)
Sometimes even a dialectal variety such as /Shi'kago/ in

contrast to /tp k a g o / was deemed as a phonological mistake by the
children and needed immediate correction.
The following peer
correcting situation took place at Judith's home:
(M=Margie,
Judith's sister)
(48) M:
Wo men lao shi shuo ta qu CHICAGO l e .

MRS. CLAREDON yao qu CHICAGO.
Mama, mama,
117
(Our teacher said that she is going to CHICAGO.

mom, MRS. CLAREDON is going to CHICAGO.)
D:
SHICAGO ye! SHICAGO yao qu. . ..

(CHICAGO, going to CHICAGO....)
J:
Bu shi SHICAGO!
D:
[Playing with the sound] CHICAGO, EAGLE.
CHICAGO!
(Not Shicago!
Mom,
Chicago!)
Another time the children's phonological correction was due

to the fact that the corrector misunderstood what his peer meant
to say, as shown in the next excerpt recorded at my apartment.
Aaron's story about "tar baby" triggered Darien's immediate
suspicion of his mispronunciation and persistent correction
despite Aaron's subsequent explanation of what he meant by "tar
baby".
As illustrated in the last sentence, Darien's incessant
yet erroneous correction infuriated Aaron who angrily commanded

him to terminate his unwarranted correction:
(4 9) D:
Wo you shuei mei ren de gu shi.

(I have a story book of sleeping beauty.)
A:
Wo you TAR B ABY.(I have one
about TAR B A B Y .)
D:
WHAT B-A-B-Y?
A:
TAR BABY.
D:
TUMBLE BABY la!
H:
TAR BABY shi shen me?
D:
TUMBLE BABY la!
A:
Jiu shi yi zhong ni tu de yi
D:
TUMBLE BABY, TUMBLE BABY la!(It's TUMBLE BABY!)
A:
[Raising his voice] TAR BABY

la!Ni you mei you ting
jian? Bu shi TUMBLE BABY. TAR BABY jiu shi TAR
BABY. Bu yao zai jiang le, hao bu hao?
(It's TAR BABY!
Did you hear that? Not TUMBLE BABY.
TAR BABY is TAR BABY.
Will you stop talking?)
(It'S TUMBLE BABY!)

(What is TAR BABY?)
(It'S TUMBLE BABY!)

si.
(It's a kind of mud.)
118
The children also code switched to instruct one another on

the proper meaning of words.
Usually the child who gave the
instruction would insist on the meaning he or she assigned to the

object even when the object could bear two different meanings.
Such an incident occurred when Darien showed me his tasting book
(i.e., a booklet showing his preference for and dislike of
different kinds of food) during circle time at school:
(50) D:
[Showing his tasting book full of happy-face stickers to

Hui-Tzu]
Ni kan, zhe shi wo de STICKER BOOK.
(Look, this is my STICKER BOOK.)
J:
[To Darien]
Zhe cai bu shi STICKER BOOK ne, shi TASTING
BOOK.
(This is not a STICKER BOOK.
I t 's a TASTING BOOK.)
According to Judith, the booklet full of stickers can not be

called "sticker book" because "lao shi shuo shi TASTING BOOK de"
("Because Teacher said i t s a TASTING BOOK").
Another similar situation happened during circle time in
which the head teacher was describing to the children one of the
helpers' clothes and let them guess who she/he was.
Darien,
capturing only part of the teacher's description, blurted out

Aaron1s name without second thought.
Judith corrected his
mistake immediately by pointing out the contrast between what the

teacher was describing (black one) and what Aaron was wearing
(brown one) .
Darien did not interpret her code-switched sentence
as an explanation but as an obviously embarrassing correction, to

which he reacted defensively
(51) T:
(C=Class) :
[Describing Samuel] THIS HELPER WEARS BLACK PANTS AND

BLUE SWEATER.
119
D:
AARON!
[Aaron was wearing brown pants and a blue sweater.]
C:
SAMUEL!
J:
Shi BLACK ONE, NOT BROWN!
D : [Hands on his forehead]

(Don't correct me!)
(It'S BLACK ONE, NOT BROWN!)
Bu yao shuo w o !
Sometimes the corrector did not concede mistakes even when

he was informed of a misunderstanding of the ongoing activity, as
was demonstrated in the conversation between Darien and Aaron
during opening time at school. Having perceived a discrepancy
between what Darien was coloring (a mouse's mouth) and what he
told the assistant he was drawing (a mouse), Aaron immediately
offered his corrective feedback to Darien.
But after Darien
explained what he was drawing, Aaron still persisted in his

correction and turned to me for confirmation.
Darien asked me to
act as his spokeswoman to stop Aaron's correction, which he

considered an embarrassing jeer:
(zui ba means mouth, and lao su
means mouse)
(52) B:
[To Darien]
WHAT IS IT THAT YOU'RE DRAWING?
D:
[Referring to
the whole picture] MOUSE.
A:
[Referring to the mouth Darien was coloring]

Zui ba bu shi MOUSE.
(Mouth is not called MOUSE.)
D:
Wo bu shi zai hua zui ba, wo shi zai hua MOUSE!

(I'm NOT drawing a mouth. I'm drawing a MOUSE!)
A:
[To Hui-Tzu]
Zui ba bu shi MOUSE.
(Mouth is not called MOUSE in English.)
D:
[To Hui-Tzu]
Wo shi zai hua MOUSE, bu shi zui b a .
Jiao ta bu yao xiao wo.
(I'm drawing a mouse, not a mouth.
Tell him not to
laugh at m e .)
120
It should be mentioned that both boys knew the English and

Mandarin terms for mouth, as manifested in their switch to
Mandarin for clarification.
Another example of peer correction occurred in a
conversational exchange between Judith and Darien about a newlyreleased video of Pocahontas at Judith's home:
(53) J:
Ke shi you yi ge POCAHONTAS xiao shi hou hen jiu hen

jiu yi qian de.
(But there's a POCAHONTAS video and she's very
little in that video.)
D:
Ta men zhang da jiu xiang SWAN PRINCESS yi yang le.

(When they grow up, they'll become adults just like
SWAN PRINCESS.)
H:
Dui, ta me gen SWAN PRINCESS bu yi yang. POCAHONTAS

shi ling wai yi zhong ren.
(Yes, but she is different from Swan Princess.
POCAHONTAS is another kind of person.)
D&J: Ta shi INDIAN.

D:
(She's INDIAN.)
JOHN SMITH shi PEOPLE.
(JOHN SMITH is
PEOPLE.)
J:
Mmm? Shenme yi si? POCAHONTAS he JOHN

SMITH liang
ge dou shi PEOPLE a!
(What do you mean? Both POCAHONTAS and JOHN SMITH
are PEOPLE.)
H:
[To Darien] POCAHONTAS shi bu shi ren?

(Is POCAHONTAS a human being?)
D:
Shi a!
(Sure!)
H:
Na ta shi bu shi PEOPLE?
D:
Bu shi, JOHN SMITH cai shi PEOPLE, POCAHONTAS shi

INDIAN.
(No, JOHN SMITH is PEOPLE.
POCAHONTAS is Indian.)
(Then is she PEOPLE?)
Darien's comment that "when Pocahontas grows up, she'll become an

adult like Swan Princess" triggered my intention to instruct them
about different kinds of people.
To my amazement, they
121
simultaneously blurted out "Indian" when I began framing my

instructional statement.
However, Darien's subsequent comment
that "John Smith is people" instigated Judith's instant

refutation of his definition of people.
Such a commentary, when
combined with the preceding conversational exchanges, did not

seem to make sense at first hearing.
However, Darien's
perception of people and Indian immediately unfolded in the last

three sentences,
in which he displayed his understanding of
Pocahontas as a human being.
His notion of "people" did not
equate with that of "human beings."
To him,
"people" and
"Indian" are two distinct categories subsumed under one umbrella

phrase "human beings"--the former only refers to white people
such as John Smith, and the latter to Native Americans such as
Pocahontas.
Given that the focal children were in the process of acquir
ing English, it is not surprising that only one instance of
correction at the syntactic level was observed.
Aaron, the most
advanced of the trio in terms of second language development, was

the instructor, and the instructional exchange occurred in my
apartment:
(54) D:
[To Guk Hun] CAN I PLAY
YOU?I WANT THIS ONE.
A:
[To Darien] Ni shuo, nizen me shuo

"CANI PLAY YOU"?
Shuo "CAN I PLAY 'WITH' YOU" la!
(You said, how come you said "CAN I PLAY YOU"? Say "CAN
I PLAY 'WITH' YOU".)
D:
CAN I PLAY WITH YOU?
Upon hearing Darien's ungrammatical sentence, Aaron immediately

pointed out his error by quoting the problematic sentence and
122
correctly supplying the proposition "with .
Aaron's correction
not only exhibited his declarative knowledge ("knowing that") of

English syntax but also his procedural knowledge ("knowing how")
(see Paris, Oka, de Britto, 1983) by demonstrating to Darien how
to produce a grammatically acceptable English sentence.
One might wonder why there was ongoing peer correction at
the phonological, semantic and syntactic levels among these young
second language learners.
My observations revealed that such an
instructional phenomenon might have been due to the head

teacher's instructional techniques as well as the inquisitive
attitude of Aaron, the most dominant figure in class.
The head
teacher frequently tested the children's understanding of

commonly used classroom vocabulary and their attention to her
instructions by intentionally making mistakes.
For example,
immediately after reviewing the dates and days on the calendar,

she would loudly sing that there were ten days.
She would
produce moo moo sounds for pigs or barking sounds for cats while
reading a story, call paper cups "sponges" while assigning
helpers for snack time, and purposefully hang a fireman's helmet
on her nose to encourage children to point out her silly mistakes
and offer corrective comments.
At first, Aaron was the first one
to notice the mistakes, subtle or obvious, intentional or

accidental, produced by either the teachers or the children.
instance, in example
For
(55) Aaron offered his gender-based opinion
to Barbara, the assistant teacher regarding what a girl should

draw during art time at school:
123
(55) B:
[To a Korean-dominant girl] WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN MIND?

WE CAN DRAW A MICKEY MOUSE.
A:
NO, A 'MINNIE MOUSE.
B:
[Nodding in agreement]
YEAH, YOU'RE RIGHT!
Sometimes, Aaron even corrected jokes, as in his correction

of Guk Hun's
(56) T:
(K) bluffing about his age:
DARIEN, HOW OLD ARE YOU?
D:
I'M FOUR.
K:
[Joking]
A:
[To Guk Hun]
K:
[Showing five fingers to Aaron]
A:
[To Guk Hun's mother]
I'M FOUR, TOO.

NO, YOU'RE THREE.
IS HE FIVE?
NO,HE'S
THREE.
With Aaron's domineering style, and the headteacher's

intentional pedagogy of faking mistakes, the group dynamics of
mutual correction gradually gained momentum, contributing to the
phenomenon of peer instruction among this group of preschoolers.
The focal children not only displayed their metalinguistic
awareness of English pronunciation, semantics, and grammaticality
but they also demonstrated that they knew socially acceptable
ways of using particular words.
Such pragmatic knowledge is
extremely important because it is an index of their acquisition

of pragmatic competence in English.
For example, during play
group at my apartment, Aaron corrected Darien's use of a socially

unacceptable word "stupid."
When I inquired why it was okay to
say that people were silly rather than stupid, Aaron's initial
reply was to cite the authority.
Later he demonstrated his own
pragmatic awareness of the appropriate situation for using the
124
word silly:
(57) A:
YOU SILLY!
D:
YOU STUPID!
A:
Ke yi shuo ren jia SILLY, bu ke yi shuo renjia STUPID.

(It's okay to say people are SILLY, but it's not right
to say people are STUPID.)
H:
Wei shen me shuo renjia SILLY ke yi, shuo ren jia STUPID
bu ke yi?
(Why is it that it's Ok to say people are SILLY and not
Ok to say they are STUPID?)
A:
Wo bu zhi dao, TEACHER shuo d e . TEACHER jiu shuo SILLY

keyi.
(I don't know.
The TEACHER said so. The TEACHER said
that it's Ok to say people are SILLY.)
H:
Oh, LINDA shuo de.
A:
Dui, yin wei SILLY shuo ni you shi hou a . ..zuo yi ge hen
hao xiao de shi qing, xiang j iang. . .jiang JOKING, pian
ren de shi hou a, ren jia dou jiao ni SILLY zhe yang zi.
(Yes, it's because SILLY means that you sometimes do
something funny, like...like JOKING or fibbing, and
people will say you are SILLY.)
(Oh, LINDA said so.)
However, Aaron's actual performance contradicted his wellarticulated reasoning.
Immediately after explaining to me the
inappropriateness of saying people are stupid, Aaron returned to

his habitual mischievous remarks, telling Darien that the way I
complimented him on his paper boat sounded stupid ("ta hao ben") .
It appeared that Aaron was more alert to others' inappropriate
usage of this socially unacceptable word than his own.
The next excerpt shows that even when Darien articulated ben
dan (stupid) while playing with words, he was censured:
(58) D:
A:
DO YOU WANT TO "ben dan"

accent)?
("stupid", with an English
Bushi la! Yingai shuo, "DO YOU WANT TO MONKEY"?

(No! You should say, "DO YOU WANT TO MONKEY" [to be a
125
monkey]?)
H:
"DO YOU WANT TO MONKEY" shi shen me yi si?

(What do you mean by "DO YOU WANT TO MONKEY"?)
A:
Women zhishi zai yong Yingwen wan.

(We're only playing with English words.)
H:
Weishenme bukeyi shuo "DO YOU WANT TO 'ben dan'"?

(Why can't he say "DO YOU WANT TO 'stupid'"?)
A:
Ye keyi shuo "DO YOU WANT TO 'ben dan'" a!

Keshi shuo
ben dan bu hao, bieren hui ku.
(Well, you can also say "DO YOU WANT TO 'ben dan'", but
it's not nice to say stupid.
It will make people cry.)
Darien, having been corrected several times and told not to

use "stupid",
finally demonstrated his linguistic understanding
and pragmatic competence when he heard his mother (DM) imitating

Whitney Houston on the radio at home:
(59) D:
[Laughing] SILLY MOMMY.

LINDA shuo SILLY ke y i .
SILLY jiu shi FUNNY de yi si. Bu ke yi shuo STUPID,
yao MAKE CHILDREN HAPPY.
(LINDA said that [it's] okay to say people are SILLY.
SILLY means FUNNY.
[You] can't say [people are]
STUPID. [You] need to MAKE CHILDREN HAPPY.)
DM:
Na shi shen me yi si?

(What does "make children happy" mean?)
D:
Jiushi rang xiaopengyou hao de yisi.

(It means to make children feel good.)
At first sight, Darien appeared to cite his teacher's words in

his justification of using "silly."
But in reply to his mother's
question about the meaning of "make children happy" in the last

sentence, Darien displayed his understanding of what he said in
English, manifesting both his linguistic and pragmatic compe
tence .
Explicit language awareness.
The children's explicit
language awareness emerged when they used code-switching to make
126
explicit comments on the language involved.
In some respects,
this function overlaps with correction in that both revolve

around language discussion.
The major difference is that for
correction, the children code-switch with an obvious intention to

correct a perceived mistake; whereas, for explicit language
awareness, the principal focus of their code-switching is to
comment on the language involved.
The children's code-switching
for explicit comments on the language was a demonstration of

their linguistic competence.
De Houwer (1990) also reported that
a 3-year-old Dutch-English speaking girl made similar

metalinguistic comments.
The children often code-switched to comment on the similar
pronunciation of two words
awareness).
(64% of the explicit language
Of the 9 comments on rhyming, each of the children
made 3 (33%) respectively.
In example (60), Aaron and Darien
were collaborating in a metalinguistic discussion about rhyming

during lunch at my apartment.
Aaron started amusing himself by
naming foods in Mandarin and found that "ji dan"

fan" (congee) rhymed.
(egg) and "xi
Darien wanted to join in and offered
another pair "fang zi/hu li" (house/fox), but what he really

meant was the English counterpart of the Mandarin pair.
After
his first unsuccessful attempt, Darien switched to English to

clarify his point and succeeded in winning Aaron's acknowledgment
of his contribution to the ongoing rhyming game:
(60) A:
D:
Ji dan, xi fan, shi RHYME ye I

(Egg and congee, they RHYME!)
Fang zi, hu li!
(House and fox!)
127
A:
Fang zi, hu li bu RHYME ye.

("Fox" and "house" in Mandarin don't RHYME.)
D:
Na HOUSE he FOX ne?
A:
IT RHYMES.
RHYMES.
(What about HOUSE and FOX?)
[Naming another pair] MOUSE AND HOUSE, IT
In a similar vein, Judith also code-switched to demonstrate

her explicit language awareness when she read a story book about
rhymes during opening time at school:
(61) H:
Zhe shi shen me?
(What is this?)
J:
THEY ARE THE SAME.

Zhe hou mian dou shi yi yang de zi
a.
(The words end with the same letters.)
H:
Zhe zen me nian?
J:
GOOSE he MOOSE, dou shi -OOSE.

(GOOSE and MOOSE both end with -OOSE.)
(How do you read these?)
The children also code-switched to comment on the appropriate

translation for a certain English word. In example
(62) , Aaron
and Darien were discussing the appropriate Mandarin translation

for "magic school bus" at my apartment.
Darien was obviously
dissatisfied with Aaron's translation because he knew that the

word "school" was missing in Aaron's Mandarin version.
However,
unable to offer a better alternative translation, Darien had no

other choice but to continue reiterating the word "school" with
the hope that Aaron could supply a proper word for "school" in
his Mandarin rendition:
(62) D:
A:
MAGIC SCHOOL BUS de zhong wen shi shen me?

(What's the Mandarin for MAGIC SCHOOL BUS?)
Jiu shi shen qi de che a!
(It's "shen qi de che", which literally means "magic
car".)
128
D:
MAGIC "SCHOOL" BUS ye!
(I meant MAGIC "SCHOOL" BUS!)
A:
Jiu shi shen qi de che!
D:
Bu shi, shi "SCHOOL" BUS ye!

(No, I meant "SCHOOL" BUS!)
(It is "shen qi de che"!)
Finally I chimed in with a reply which matched Darien's

implicit knowledge and he immediately instructed Aaron on what he
considered to be a better translation:
H:
MAGIC SCHOOL BUS de zhong wen ying gai shi "shen qi de

'xiao' che".
(The Mandarin for MAGIC SCHOOL BUS is "shen qi de XIAO
che".)
D:
Dui ya, shi shen qi de "xiao che", AARON!

(Yes, it's "shen qi de XIAO che", Aaron!)
A:
Wo zhi dao.
(I know.)
Another instance of explicit language awareness occurred

when Aaron began putting the puzzle pieces into a box after
finishing playing with them at my apartment. Darien and Aaron
respectively presented a different English term for "fen kai",
which literally means "to separate".
They reached a mutual
agreement that both "take apart" and "move" have the same
meaning.
Implicit in their discussion seemed to suggest an
awareness that a semantic meaning can have different phonological

forms in two languages:
(63) A:
Yao ba zhe xie PIECE fang jin qu yao yi yao, zhe yang ta
men hui TAKE APART, xia ci pai cai bu hui tai j ian dan.
(Need to shake the PIECES in the box so that they can
TAKE APART. When someone wants to do the puzzle, it
won't be too easy for him.)
H:
TAKE APART shi shen me yi si?

(What does TAKE APART mean?)
A:
Jiu shi feng kai de yi si.
(It means to separate.)
129
D:
MOVE ye shi fen kai de yi si. MOVE ye shi fen kai de yi

si, shi bu shi?
(MOVE also means the same.
MOVE also means the same,
right?)
A:
Dui ya!
(Yes!)
Later while they were watching the video playback, I asked Darien
about the meaning of "move".
He still insisted that "move" was
synonymous with "take apart" because "meici wo han YUPA hai you
AARON FIGHT de shihou, BARBARA dou ba tamen MOVE dao bu yi yang
de difang, suoyi MOVE jiushi fenkai de yisi"
(whenever I FIGHT
with YUPA and AARON, BARBARA always MOVE them to another place,
so move meant "to separate") .
It is interesting to see how
Darien inferred the meaning of "move" by associating it with the

particular social context in which it occurred.
Communicative Strategies
The children also used code-switching as a communicative
strategy.
language,
When they failed to convey their message in one

they immediately switched to explain or reiterate it in
the other language.
This type of code-switching seemed to be a
reflection of their bilingual communicative competence.
Gumperz
(1982) also documented reiteration functions in bilingual adults'

code-switching.
Explication.
The trio switched freely between Mandarin and
English to explain a certain notion in the other language (4%).

When I asked them about terms in English, they frequently
switched to Mandarin when they gave me their answers (2%) :
(examples 64 & 65 were recorded at my apartment, and example 66
was recorded at school)
130
(64) H:
Chi fan zhi qian yao xian zen yang?

(What do we need to do before eating?)
D:
Yao xian WASH YOUR HAND.
H:
D:
Yao xian xi shou.
(65) A:
(Need to WASH YOUR HAND.)
(What does that mean?)
(Need to wash your hand.)
Wo zui xi huan chi RICE le!
H:
A:
RICE a?
H:
Dui.
A:
Mi ya!
(66) J:
(RICE is my favorite!)
(You mean RICE?)
(Yes.)
(Rice, of course!)
ANTS!
H:
ANTS shi shen me yi si?
J:
Ma y i .
(What does ANTS mean?)
(Ants.)
Some might considered these examples to be merely

situational, which were caused by my questions, rather than
reflections of the focal children's natural communicative
strategies.
But my observations revealed that the children could
use code-switching to explain a term even without my intentional

questions.
For example, at school Aaron once showed me a picture
of a and code-switched to Mandarin to tell me its Mandarin name

and explained its habit,
for sloth).
"SLOTH!
Shulai (the Mandarin equivalent
Ta dou diao zai shushang zheyangzi"
on trees, like this.)
(It hangs itself
Once when I mistook a chipmunk for a
squirrel, Darien code-switched to explain to me the difference

between the two:
chipmunk).
stripe
"Shi CHIPMUNK, hualisu (the equivalent for
Ni kan you xiantiao"
[on its back].)
(Look at the black-and-white
Judith also switched to Mandarin to
131
explain how to play a computer game,

Zhe shi yao ni MATCH de"
"LET ME SHOW YOU THIS ONE.
(This asks you to MATCH [the objects
and their beginning letters].)
From these instances, it appeared
that code-switching for explication was part of the children's

natural communicative strategies, which they would exploit when
they felt it to be necessary.
The reverse switch from Mandarin to English, even though it
occurred less frequently (2%), was quite interesting because it
demonstrated the children's growing competence in their second
language.
In example (67), after a lengthy but unsuccessful
discussion of what he meant, Aaron switched to English to explain

his original meaning
in order to eliminate some unwanted
misconceptions:
(67) A:
H:
Wo hai you kan guo SEVEN FACE de GENIE ye!

(I've seen a SEVEN FACE GENIE on TV!)
Qi zhang lian de GENIE?
(A GENIE with seven faces?)
A:
Bu shi, wo shi shuo qi ge GENIE.

(No, I meant seven GENIEs.)
H:
FACE bu shi lian ma? SEVEN FACE jiu shi qi

a!
(Doesn't FACE mean "lian" in Mandarin?
should be "qi zhang lian" in Mandarin!)
A:
Wo bu shi shuo qige lian de GENIE, shi qigeGENIE.

(I didn't mean a seven-faced GENIE.
I meant seven
GENIEs.)
[Spreading both his hands] Shi SPLIT INTO PIECES.
H:
Shen me yi si?
A:
Jiu shi fen chu lai dao bie de di fang.

(It means splitting into different places.)
zhang lian
SEVEN FACE
Such a switch did not signal incompetence in Mandarin.
Rather it
marked a certain degree of capability to use both languages
132
adeptly because the last sentence demonstrates that Aaron knew

the Mandarin equivalent for "split into pieces".
In the story-telling of "Tar
switched
(68) A:
Baby" at myapartment, Aaron
to English again for explication:

...ran hou lei, you yi tian nei ge tu zi lai le.
Ran
hou you BEAR han FOX j iu duo zai shu hou mian k a n .
(One day the rabbit hopped by. The BEAR and the FOX
watched from behind a tree.)
H:
Kan ta zen me yang, shi bu shi?

(To see what the rabbit was going to do, right?)
A:
Dui, kan ta zen me yang. Ran hou ta jiu shuo HOWDY.

(Yes, to see what he was going to do.
And he said
HOWDY.)
H:
Tu zi shuo a?
(The rabbit said
A:
Dui, na bian shi HI de yi si.

(Yes, and that means HI.)
so?)
When I inquired about which character greeted the tar baby with
the word "howdy", Aaron deemed it to be an indication of my
inability to understand this informal greeting and instantly
switched to "hi" to explain the meaning.
Judith also switched to English for explication during
circle time when the head teacher checked attendance:
(X=Alexander, a monolingual English-speaking boy)
(69) T:
J:
IF I CALL YOUR NAME, I
NEED YOU TO WARM YOUR HANDS.
MINE'S ALREADY WARM!
T : ALEXANDER?
X:
[Showing his palm with a Band-Aid on it]

THIS IS MY HAND.
T:
OH!
D:
[To Hui-Tzu] SORE HAND shi shen me a?

(What's SORE HAND?)
HE'S GOT A SORE HAND.
133
J : [To Darien]
SORE HAND j iu shi BROKEN HAND a !
(SORE HAND is BROKEN HAND!)
Judith used a more familiar word "broken" to explain to Darien
the concept of "sore".
This explication drove her point home
successfully because later when I asked Judith what she meant by

"broken hand", Darien jumped in with a reply,
shi shou po diao le, hen tong de yi si."
"BROKEN HAND jiu
("Broken hand" means
your hand is hurt and i t 's painful.)

In a similar vein, Darien also code-switched to English to
explain his understanding of the red color during art time at
school:
(70) D:
[To Hui-Tzu]
Zui ba shi shen me?
(What's the color for lips?)
H:
Zui ba shi hong se a!
D:
RED... RED RANGER a?
Reiteration.
(Lips are red!)

(Like RED...RED RANGER?)
The second communicative strategy which
demonstrated the children's bilingual communicative competence

was reiteration (4%).
The trio sometimes switched languages to
reiterate their messages when their conversational partners did

not respond.
One such situation occurred when Darien's mother
was shampooing Darien's hair and some water accidentally splashed

into his e y e :
(71) D:
DM:
[Shouting] Ni shui nongdao wo yanjing le la!

(You splashed water into my eye!)
[No response]
D:
YOU SPIT IN MY EYE!
DM:
Duibuqi, wo bushi guyi de.
(Sorry, it was an accident.)
134
Although Darien used the English inappropriately, his mother

understood what he meant and immediately wiped the water off his
eyes.
Judith also switched from English to Mandarin when her
preferred language failed to attract her mother's immediate
response at home:
(72)
J:
I'M
JM:
HUNGRE, HUNGRY!
[Busy chopping pork in the kitchen]
J:
Mama, duzi e le!
(Mom, I'm hungry!)
JM:
Wo ba zhege gaowan jiu gei ni nong chi d e .

(I'll give you something to eat as soon as I'm done
with this.)
In a similar vein, Aaron also used code-switching to elicit

Darien's acknowledgment of his question at school:
(73)
D:
[To
the head teacher]
A:
WHAT
D:
[No
YOU KNOW I'M PRINCE.
ARE YOU DOING, DARIEN?

response]
A:
Ni zai zuo shenme, DARIEN?

DARIEN?)
(What are you doing,
D:
Ni buyao kan wo zuo, hao bu hao?

(Don't watch what I'm doing, all right?)
Message Form
I classified code-switching that involved forms distinct
from
that used in normal conversation (Fantini, 1985,
message forms.
quotation.
p. 59) as
This category included playacting, word play, and
Playacting and word play were similar to other
bilingual children's code-switching (see Fantini, 1985; Orellena,

1994a; and De Houwer, 1990); whereas the quotation function was
135
similar to that of adult code-switching (Gumperz, 1982).
The
children switched from Mandarin (or Mandarin containing English

words) to English when engaging in this type of code-switching.
Playacting.
The children's code-switching for playacting
suggested that they began to take on a bilingual identity.
The
trio sometimes played house or acted out a familiar scene from

popular children's culture (5.48%).
played, real people
Regardless of the roles they
(e.g., father and mother) or imaginary
figures (e.g., Power Ranger and Pocahontas), they always switched

intersententially to English to enact their roles.
Darien,
Judith and her older sister Margie were engaged in imaginative

play in example
(74) at Judith's house. The three children spent
quite some time negotiating their roles before starting the

subsequent playacting.
To be more precise, Margie, the oldest of
the three, assigned the roles to Judith and Darien.
During the
process of role negotiation, Judith modified her older sister's

role from a juice "man" to a juice "lady", further proof of peer
correction.
While Judith still had her doubts about which Meijer
to shop at, Darien could not wait any longer and spoke his first
line in English to Margie as a talking puppy-client who wanted to
drink juice.
Such a switch marked the beginning of the first
sequence of playacting and forced Margie to end her last

procedural instruction to Judith ("You two are a family"):
(74) M:
[To Darien] Ni xiang dang baba hai shi gege hai shi
PUPPY?
(You want to play the daddy, brother or PUPPY?)
M:
[To Judith] Ni dang mama. Wo xiang dang JUICE de ren,

JUICE de MAN.
(You play the mother.
I want to play the MAN who sells
136
JUICE, JUICE MAN.)

J:
[Correcting Margie] JUICE LADY!
M:
JUICE LADY.
M:
[To Darien] Ni dang shen me?
D:
PUPPY.
J:
Wo dang MOMMY.
M:
[To Darien] NO,

hai mei you gao hao ne, jia zhuang.
Yao shi ni men mei you JUICE jiu zhao wo lai yao.
(No, the juice is not ready yet.
Come to me if you want
JUICE.)
J:
Yao shi wo men bu zhi dao SHOPPING zai na yi ge

MEIJER...
(What if we don't know which MEIJER we're SHOPPING...)
D:
JUICE, PLEASE!
(What do you want to be?)
(I play the MOMMY.)
One thing which merits discussion is the difference between

Margie's use of Mandarin (or Mandarin containing English words)
for stage directives and
English for actors' lines.
When Darien
asked for the same cherry juice as Judith's, Margie switched
to
Mandarin (containing English words) to instruct him that he

should share the same juice with Judith because they were a
family.
Upon finishing the directives, she switched back to
English to resume her unfinished lines for the juice lady.
The
use of "OK" marked both the end of her directive remarks and the
reinitialization of her playacting:
M:
OK, ni men liang ge shi yi ge FAMILY.

(OK, you two are a FAMILY.)
J:
I WANT CHERRY JUICE.
M:
THIS IS CHERRY JUICE.
D:
I WANT CHERRY JUICE.
137
M:
[To Darien] NO, ni gen ta SHARE yi g e .

(NO, you SHARE the cherry juice with her.)
M:
[To Judith]
OK!
I GIVE YOU THE WRONG ONE.
THAT'S
STRAWBERRY JUICE.
YOU DO...DO YOU DRINK IT? NO.
THIS ONE IS CHOCOLATE JUICE. OH, NO! BETTER BE SELLING
JUICE.
However, the three young actresses and actor did not play
long before Darien started another round of role negotiation. The
introduction of Darien's wish to be a Power Ranger in Mandarin
signaled the beginning of another role negotiation.
Much to his
chagrin, Darien, completely outnumbered by the girls, was

prohibited from playing his favorite Power Ranger:
(75) D:
J:
Wo xiang yao bian cheng POWER RANGER.

(I want to be a POWER RANGER.)
NO, ni bu xing.
Ni dei bian cheng mai dong xi de ren.
Wo men dou ying gai dang mai dong xi de ren.
(NO, you can't.
You need to play the sellers. We
should all play the sellers.)
So he opted for a much more low-profile role:
a librarian.
This idea appeared to win the girls' approval and they began to
switch to English to enact their respective roles,
juice lady and
the buyer:
D:
Wo xiang yao bian LIBRARY, hao bu hao? Wo xiang yao mai

shu d e .
(Can I play the LIBRARY [sic]? I want to sell books.)
J:
OK.
D:
[To Margie]
Woshi LIBRARY de ren.
Ni BOOK dou yao
gei wo.
(I'm a person who works for the LIBRARY. You should
give me all your EOOKs.)
M:
NO, zhe shi wo JUICE. Zhe ge shi ni de shu.

(NO, this is my JUICE. This is your book.)
M:
[Calling out]
JUICE, JUICE.
SHOPPING FOR SALE!
138
J:
I NEED JUICE.
M:
WHICH JUICE?
J:
[To Darien who's trespassing on her

DARIEN ni zuo na li qu a!
(DARIEN,
D:
Yin wei wo xiang bian LIBRARY.

(I want to be the LIBRARY person.)
M:
[To Judith]
territory]
go sit over there!)
WHICH JUICE?
J:
[Turning to Margie] UM...WHAT?
M:
THIS ONE IS STRAWBERRY JUICE.
J:
I DRINK STRAWBERRY JUICE, TOO.
J : [To Darien w h o 's at her book stand]
YOU WANT A BOOK?
D:
THIS IS POWER RANGER LIBRARY.
M:
NO ONE WANTS POWER RANGERS, ONLY BOYS!
But when the juice lady (Margie) heard the librarian (Darien)
claim that the library was a Power Ranger library, she exhibited
strong disapproval, prompting the actor to switch to Mandarin
(containing English words) to renegotiate his role.
After being denied his
wish to
be a bookseller,
decided to play a grocer at County Market in example
(76).
Darien
He
tried to ask a favor of Margie-that she patronize his shop.

Margie turned down his pleading request by switching to English,
demarcating the onset of the third sequence of playacting.
(76) D:
Wo ke bu ke yi bian cheng BOOK de.
(Can I sell BOOKs?)
M:
NO. Yin wei JUDITH dou mai BOOK d e .

(NO. Because JUDITH is the one who sells BOOKs.)
D:
Na wo xiang yao bian SHOPPING de ren.

Wo xiang yao bian
SHOPPING de ren. Wo xiang yao bian COUNTY MARKET de
ren.
(Then I want to be the one
doing SHOPPING.
I wantto be
the one doing SHOPPING.
Iwant to be the one selling
139
things at COUNTY MARKET.)

M:
OK.
D:
Ni ke bu ke yi dang PERSON bang w o ...

(Can you be the PERSON buying stuff from me?)
M:
NO, I DON'T HAVE TO.
Upon hearing Margie's lines, Judith immediately followed

suit and switched to English to promote her Pocahontas movie.
Judith's switch to Mandarin appeared to indicate her temporary
inability to express herself in English since she sounded
hesitant to use the more complicated sentence structure in
English (i.e.,
"is there anyone who wants to buy a movie").
But
she soon switched back to English to continue her advertising

campaign.
Darien also began peddling his groceries in English
("shopping, shopping, shopping") to attract the only customer,

Margie, who later switched to Mandarin to offer him some correc
tive instruction on how he should chant to hawk his products
("you should say 'shopping for sale'") .
The three continued
their playacting in English during the rest of the event:

J:
YOU KNOW, THIS IS MY BOOK.

I 'M ...I 'M ...You ren yao
mai zhe xie MOVIE ma?
(I'm...I'm...is there any one who
wants to borrow MOVIES?)
I GOT POCAHONTAS MOVIE.
DO
YOU SEE POCAHONTAS MOVIE?
D:
SHOPPING, SHOPPING, SHOPPING!
J:
POCAHONTAS MOVIE!
D:
SHOPPING, SHOPPING!
M:
Ni ying gai shuo "SHOPPING FOR SALE."

(You should say "SHOPPING FOR SALE.")
D:
SHOPPING FOR SALE!
M:
SHOPPING FOR SALE!
[Passing by Darien to Judith's stand]
I WANT IT!
140
D:
[To Margie] DON'T GO AROUND!

DON'T GO AROUND!
[To Judith] WHAT'D YOU WANT?
J:
I WANT THIS.
M:
I WANT SNOW...NO, NO SWORD IN THE STONE...NO, NO.

I
DON'T WANT TO BUY ANYTHING. WHO WANTS TO BUY MY JUICE?
Aaron also acted out an action scene at his house:

(77) A:
A:
[To Darien] Ni zhi dao ma? Wo shi WHITE RANGER.

(You know what?
I'm the WHITE RANGER.)
[Singing twice] GO, GO!
POWER RANGER! MIGHTY MORPHIN
POWER RANGER! Yao shuo "IT'S MORPHIN TIME"!
(Need to say "IT'S MORPHIN TIME".)
Word Play.
The second communication form in which the
children tended to switch from their Mandarin (or Mandarin

containing English words) to English was when they engaged in
word play for fun (3.14%).
De Houwer (1992) also documented that
a 3-year-old English-Dutch speaking girl code-switched for word

play.
The children's code-switching for word play appeared to be
related to their English proficiency and their personalities.

Aaron, with the highest English proficiency and domineering
personality, usually was the first one to code-switch for word
play.
Darien, with lower English proficiency and playful
personality, usually followed suit.

One instance took place during the school's snack time. The
three were having a discussion in Mandarin about the prohibition
of playing action heroes at school.
It was not until they saw
Guk Hun showing a story book of pickles to Barbara that they

started switching to English for word play:
(78) A:
PICKLE CASTLE, PICKLE OCTOPUS.
141
J:
PICKLE BOW.
D:
BOAT I
A:
NO, PICKLE OCTOPUS.
D:
PICKLE SHARKI
J:
PICKLE ALLIGATOR!
A:
PICKLE CUP CAKE!
B:
[To the trio] CAN YOU PICKLE... YOUR CAKE AND SNACK FOR
ME, PLEASE?
D:
PICKLE BOAT I
[To Aaron] Wo chi bu wan.
A:
Ni zai chi la!
(I can't eat it up.)
(Eat a bit more!)
When word play is initiated between interacting individuals,

any ensuing embarrassment on the child's part may be considered
as a first sign that he or she has some understanding of what is
appropriate in the communicative context and what is not.
Darien's immediate switch to Mandarin following Barbara's halfjoking order in example (78) was an indication of his awareness
of the inappropriateness of prolonged word play during snack
time.
In addition, the children's laughter after each other's
word combination also seemed to indicate that they were according

these words a special place (i.e., other than being normal).
Thus an awareness of their strangeness and silliness seemed to be
present.
Quotation.
The last communication form in which the
children switched from Mandarin (or Mandarin containing English

words) to English was for quotations
(1%).
When quoting a
cartoon character, the focal children usually did so in the
142
language in which the original statement was made.

Darien described a scene in
For example,
"Alladin" in which the cartoon
figure was trying to retrieve the magic lamp in the Cave of

Wonder at his h o m e :
(79) D:
. . .ta hui tou kan dao ABU THE MONKEY yao na

FORBIDDEN TREASURE, ta jiu shuo "ABU, DON'T TOUCH
IT". . .ran hou shi tou jiu zheng ge dou luo xia lai l e .. .
(... he turned to see ABU THE MONKEY touching the
FORBIDDEN TREASURE, he shouted, "ABU, DON'T TOUCH
IT." And all the rocks fell down...)
Discourse Routines
There were three types of discourse routines in the
children's code-switching:
interjection (5%), negation (4%), and
apology (2%). Interjection was a conversational function among

bilingual adults' code-switching (Gumperz,
1982); whereas
negation was a function that was also reported in other bilingual

children's code-switching (Stavans, 1992).
Apology, to my
knowledge, seemed to be a function that has rarely been discussed

before.
Although some might argue that code-switching for discourse
routines is nothing more than formulaic speech generated by most
young bilinguals during the early phase of second language
acquisition,
I would still deem it to be a crucial function of
these children's code-switching on the grounds that their almost

flawless usage of such formulaic speech displayed not only their
linguistic knowledge but also their pragmatic competence of how
to use these routines at a proper time in an appropriate
situation.
143
Interjection.
Various English expressive interjections
common to children this age, such as "yuk/yucky, yum/yummy" and

"oops" were interspersed in Aaron's and Judith's language.
Darien, on the other hand, produced a greater variety of
interjections in his speech.
In addition to those afore
mentioned, Darien generated some interjections similar to those

of
older children such as "cool",
"shoot".
"oh, man",
"not again" or even
In an interview with Darien's mother, she revealed that
Darien learned most of the interjections from TV.
She also
admitted that Darien probably picked up "shoot" from her since

she usually used that word when she was mad at herself:
...ni zhi dao you shi hou kai che gan zhe dai ta qu shang
xue, cong cong mang mang hen rong yi jiu wan ji yao dai shen
me dong x i . Dao le che shang cai xiang dao j iu hen sheng
qi, bu jing yi de jiu hui shuo SHOOT. Na ta zuo zai hou
mian ting duo le, ke neng jiu xue qi lai le.
(You know sometimes when I'm in a hurry to drive him to
school, I tend to forget things. When I'm in the car and
suddenly it occurs to me that I leave something important at
home, I become mad at myself and usually blurt out "shoot".
Darien sits in the back and probably picks that up.)
Judith's mother also commented on the high frequency of
interjections in her daughter's daily language:
Xianzai yijing... (laughing) ta baba shuo ta xianzai hui
yong nazhong qiaopihua hui yong de duo de budeliao, shenme
YUK, YUM de, gao dou gao bu qingchu shi zenme hui shier...
(Now she...her dad goes, "she picked up so many wisecracks,
like yuk, yum", and we have no idea where she heard them...)
Examples
(80) and (81) are representative of the
interjections across different settings:

(80) Aaron and Darien were playing at Aaron's home.
A: Wo shi yige hao xixiegui.
Wo
meiyou yao dang huai
d e . Wo yao dang hao de x i ...
(I'm a good vampire.
I'm not a bad one.
I want to be
a g o o d ...)
144
D:
[Falling off a chair] OUCH!

(I'm bleeding!)
Wo liu xie le la!
(81) Darien and Alexander were playing during free-play time

at school.
D:
LET'S GO, ALEXANDER!
HURRY!
[Microphone falling off]
Zenme you diao xiao lai le, SHOOT!
(How come it falls off again, SHOOT!)
Negation.
The second type of discourse routine was negation
in response to questions or suggestions (4%).
Aaron and Judith
often used "No" when they refused to comply with their mothers'
requests:
(82) AM: Shi Tou, ni de wanju jie ta PLAY yi xia, hao bu hao?
(Aaron, let him PLAY with your toy for a while, ok?)
A:
NO.
(83) JM:
J:
(NO.
I wanna PLAY with it.)
Yuan Yuan, wo juede ni haishi buyao xue tamen cong

shafa shang JUMP DOWN xialai.
(Judith, I think you'd better not JUMP DOWN from the
sofa like them.)
NO, wo xiang yao JUMP DOWN!
Ap o I o o v .
(2%).
Wo xiang yao PLAY.
(NO, I want to JUMP DOWN!)
The last type of discourse routine was apology
The children switched from Mandarin to English to
apologize when they did something wrong, as demonstrated in

example (84) in which Aaron closed the door of the playroom and
accidentally jammed Darien's finger:
(84) D:
[Crying loudly]
Hao tong a!
(It hurts!)
H:
Zenme le?
(What happened?)
D:
AARON yongli guanmen jia dao wo de shuo le.

(AARON closed the door, and he jammed my finger.)
A:
[To Darien]
SORRY!
Intentional code-switching refers to those switches that did
145
not follow the social norms, and which were used to change the
speaker's role relationships with his/her conversational
partners.
Previous researchers studying the code-switching
behavior of young bilingual or trilingual children have

documented instances of such code-switching (among others, see
Genishi, 1981; McClure,
1977, 1981; Stavans, 1992), although some
did not use this term to describe this behavior (McClure, 1977,
1981; Stavans, 1992).
My observations revealed that the focal
children did code switch intentionally, although the frequency

was not very high (2%).
The emergence of intentional code-
switching at such an early age deserves our attention despite its

low frequency.
observed:
Three kinds of intentional code-switching were
teasing, encoding authority, and excluding an
ethnically different audience.
The latter two belonged to what
Myers-Scotton (1983, 1993) called marked code-switching.

Teasing.
The children very occasionally code-switched from
English to Mandarin to tease their non-Mandarin-speaking

classmates (1%) .
I observed Darien use Mandarin to address a
Turkish-English speaking girl with whom he always spoke in

English while lining up to wash hands for snack:
(N=Naz, a
Turkish-English speaking girl)

(85) D:
I'M FIRST!
N:
NO, I'M FIRST!
D:
YES!
N:
NO!
D:
YES!!
146
N : N O !!
D:
[Stomping his feet with a sly smile and clenched fists]

Da ni yo!
(Beat you!)
N:
[Stomping
her feet]
D:
Da ni yo!
(Beat you!)
N:
NO!
NO!
After yelling "yes" twice to the Turkish girl, Darien

started switching to his ethnic language Mandarin to address her.
Such a switch is a departure from the usual communication medium
(i.e., English) of addressing non-Mandarin speaking children at
school.
Darien seemed to enjoy N a z 's inability to understand his
Mandarin and thus wore a sly smile.

On another occasion, Judith switched to Mandarin to jeer at
Naz for her stammering in response to a story entitled "The big
bad pig and the three little wolves" during school's story time:
(86) N:
THE WOLF....UM...THE WOLF...WOLF...UM...THE WOLF...
J : [Turning around to Naz with a smile]

WOLF shen me ya WOLF?
(WOLF what?)
J:
[Noticing
that Hui-Tzu was looking at her]
N:
[Hands on her waist] DON'T LAUGH, JUDITH!
WOLF WHAT?
While Naz was groping for words to express herself, Judith's

response was that of a mocking audience, jeering at the speaker's
temporary inability to articulate her thoughts, rather than that
of a sympathetic listener waiting patiently.
What's intriguing
is that Judith, who sometimes even talked to Aaron and Darien in

English,
spoke Mandarin to Naz.
She immediately switched to
English when she noticed that I was looking at her.
Although Naz
147
was unable to understand the linguistic aspect of Judith's first

sentence, she was observant enough to detect Judith's
communicative intent (teasing) and commanded her to stop that
mocking smile.
Even after the story time was over, Naz was still
mad at Judith and said "I hate you, Judith!" while lining up for
craft work.
Judith's switch to Mandarin to address a non-Mandarin
speaker was a marked movement away from a friendly peer
relationship to an unfriendly one.
This did not mean that the
children did not tease one another in English.
They did.
However, there is much less likelihood of being caught red-handed

and of receiving a teacher's admonition when teasing a classmate
in one's own language, especially when both the teachers and the
teased party did not know what exactly has been said.
Switching
to their native language not only helps them to achieve their

communicative intent (teasing) but also gives them more leeway to
articulate unfriendly remarks without having to take the unpleas
ant consequences of being reprimanded.
Encoding authority.
The second intentional code-switching I
observed among the boys was to express one's authority.

Scotton
Myers-
(1983, 1993) also noted similar code-switching among
adults in East African society and called it marked code

switching.
She argued that code-switching should be seen as a
process of negotiation of social identities in conversation, and

that code choices are interpreted in terms of relative
markedness.
"The social purpose of conversation is negotiation
148
of a set of rights and obligations (RO set) between speaker and

addressee..."
(Myers-Scotton, 1983, p. 117).
In conventionalized
talk, social norms specify an unmarked RO set for certain pairs

of social identities.
The unmarked address form between
playmates such as Aaron and Darien is in English; that is, they

referred to each other by their English names.
The relationship
set which is evoked by this choice is a state of equal status.

Neither has the authority to command the other nor the obligation
to obey the other.
When one of the boys switches to address the
other with his Chinese name, which is only used by their

respective parents when addressing them, this switching is, in
Myers-Scotton1s (1983) framework, a movement from an unmarked
choice to a marked choice.
A new RO set is implicated:
(Hao Hao
is Darien's Chinese name)

(87) A:
D:
A:
(88) A:
DARIEN, gan kuai chi.
[Laughing and making faces at Aaron]

Hao H a o ! ! Gan kuai chi, yao bu ran qu fa zhan!
(Hao Hao!!
Eat quickly or go stand facing the wall!)
[To Darien who is holding him from behind and trying
to pull his pants off]
NO, DARIEN, bu yao zhe yang la!
(NO, DARIEN, don't do that!)
D:
[Still pulling]
A:
DARIEN!
D:
[Still pulling]
A:
(DARIEN, eat your lunch quickly.)
Hao Hao! STOP!
By using Darien's Chinese name, Aaron departed from the unmarked

choice, from the expected, and evoked a new RO set which gave him
149
the right to command Darien, who was expected to be obedient and

compliant.
In example (88), after failing to stop Darien from
silly play during free-play time, Aaron switched to use Darien's

Chinese name "Hao Hao" to encode the authoritative role of
parents.
Upon hearing Aaron calling his Chinese name, Darien
stopped pulling Aaron's pants and stood without moving for a

second or two, perhaps due to embarrassment or his acknowledgment
of Aaron's authority. When I inquired about why he called Darien
by his Chinese name in those two instances, Aaron replied,
"yin
wei DARIEN bu guai de shi hou, ta mama dou zhe yang zi jiao ta"
(because Darien's mom always calls him like this when DARIEN does
not behave w e l l .)
This reply can be considered evidence of
Aaron's intentional code-switching in marking a change of role

relationship with Darien.
Such an intentional code-switching
also is a manifestation of Myers-Scotton's marked code-switching

(Myers-Scotton, 1983, 1993).
An ethnicallv-based exclusion strategy.
The third
intentional code-switching I observed among the boys is excluding

an ethnically different audience.
According to Myers-Scotton
(1993, p. 136), switching to one's "ethnic languages in front of

others", which narrows the social distance between the switcher
and his/her ethnic group members but prevents speakers of other
ethnic groups from participating in the ongoing conversation, is
marked code-switching.
This marked code-switching occurred when
the boys wanted to keep a secret from their teacher (NC=Nancy, a

student teacher):
150
(89) D:
[To Nancy] YOU KNOW I WANT TO DRAW SOMEFING

CUT OUT.
NC:
OK.
D:
YOU KNOW WHAT...
[sic] AND
N C : EH?
D:
YOU KNOW WHAT IS IT?

TELLING.
[Rising intonation]
I'M NOT
A:
[Whispering to Darien]
(This is a S ....)
NC:
WHAT?
I DON'T KNOW CHINESE IF YOU WANNA TELL ME IN
CHINESE. [Laughing and shaking her head] I D O N 'T KNOW.
D:
[Whispering to Aaron]
(Mica is a SKUNK.)
A:
[Whispering back]
Zhe shi yi ge S...
MICA shi SKUNK.
Wo zhi dao.
(I know.)
N C : A WHAT?
A:
[To Darien]
Bu yao gen ren jiang!
(Don't tell anybody!)
D:
[Laughing slyly]
NC:
NOTHING? IF YOU SHARE SECRET IN CHINESE,

ABLE TO KNOW, CUZ I DON'T KNOW CHINESE.
D:
[Whispering to Aaron] MICA shi SKUNK.

(MICA is a SKUNK.)
A:
[Laughing to Nancy] DID YOU HEAR?
NC:
NO.
NOTHING!
I WON'T BE
Initially Darien appeared to want to tell Nancy what he was

drawing. However, attracting her attention, he let her wait in
suspense to hear his unfinished story.
The rising intonation
that accompanied "I'm not telling" implied that more information

was about to come.
Aaron, unable to capture Darien's underlying
intention, whispered to Darien a guess in Mandarin, which turned
151
the following conversation in an unexpected yet interesting

direction.
Nancy,
the student teacher, was sensitive about
Aaron's whispering to Darien.
However, Nancy's confession of her
inability to understand Mandarin boomeranged because Darien and

Aaron did not show the expected consideration for her by
switching back to English.
Instead they enjoyed the exciting
moment of sharing a secret in Mandarin in front of their baffled

teacher.
The only two switches to English were to assure Nancy
that "nothing" was being talked about (Darien's line) and to

check if she overheard their secret (Aaron's line).
Code-switching to exclude an audience from a different
ethnic group in order to share a secret is certainly marked
(Myers-Scotton,
1993) because it violates two conventional rules-
-speak the language which is spoken to you
(Chambers, 1975) and
speak the language your conversational partner knows best.
Such
a switch also implicates a new set of role relationships between

the teacher and the children:
from that of an authoritative
figure and supposedly submissive followers to that of an outsider

and a pair of insiders.
In the latter relationship,
solidarity
is more important among the children who share the same language
than telling the truth to an outsider.
This instance
demonstrates that in addition to switches required by situational

factors (i.e., participants' language backgrounds), these two
children knew how to maneuver their bilingual competence to
achieve internal purposes.
This incident also substantiates the
assistant teacher's recall of the focal children's intentional
152
use of their native language to share a secret:

...they speak their own language when they don't want their
teacher to know what they were doing...(laughing) , because I
ask "what did you say?" They said, "we speak Chinese so you
d o n 't understand."
Summary
Previous researchers (Cheng & Butler, 1989; Fantini, 1985;
Genishi, 1981; Kwan-Terry, 1992; Lanza, 1992; McClure,
1981; Saunders,
1977,
1988; Stavans, 1992) who studied the language
behavior of bilingual children demonstrated that their code

switching behavior was neither random nor the result of a
linguistic deficit.
Their code-switching,
manifestation of rule-governed behavior.

corroborated this claim.
in fact, was a
My findings
Although the focal children did code
switch to refer to a term which they did not know how to express
in the language they were using (i.e., referential function),
which suggested their lack of knowledge about the corresponding
Mandarin equivalents of culture-bound topics, the frequency of
such a function was relatively low (15%).
More often than not,
the children's code-switching demonstrated their bilingual

linguistic competence and identity (unmarked code-switching and
playacting), their metalinguistic awareness (i.e., correction and
explicit language awareness) as well as their communicative
competence
(i.e., explication and reiteration).
Their code
switching also displayed their awareness of and sensitivity to

the participants' language backgrounds
(addressee specification),
and conveyed extralinguistic information about forms (word play,

and quotation) and discourse routines
(interjection, negation,
153
and apology).
Finally, the children knew how to use code-
switching intentionally and to change their relationships with

their conversational partners
(i.e., teasing, encoding authority,
and excluding an ethnically different audience).
This type of
code-switching demonstrated that the children were able to use

code-switching to exploit their communicative competence to
achieve internal purposes.
Characteristics of Each Individual Child's Code-Switching
In addition to the general functions found in the three
children's code-switching, each child appeared to employ code
switching in ways which were characteristic of that child.
Aaron
code-switched to instruct Darien, to act as Darien's

spokesperson, and to express anger.
Darien code-switched to
experiment with English and to express his surging emotions.

Judith code-switched due to her language preference for English.
Aaron's Code-Switching
Instruction
As the son of two doctoral students majoring in biology and
science education, Aaron possessed a large vocabulary in both
languages for animals, plants, dinosaurs, and planets.
When he
learned a new vocabulary item in English, he sometimes tried to

impart this knowledge to Darien.
However, Darien usually did not
show much interest in his demonstration.
Aaron's code-switching
to instruct Darien usually served the explication function

discussed previously. In example (90), which occurred at my
apartment, Aaron demonstrated to Darien his newly acquired
154
knowledge of the planets by asking a test question to see if

Darien knew the name of the most distant planet from the earth.
Darien cooperated by sustaining this conversation, although he
did not appear to know the answer.
After ascertaining Darien's
ignorance of the topic, Aaron provided the correct answer

"Pluto."
However, his memory failed him in remembering the
largest planet, Jupiter:

(90) A:
DARIEN, ni zhidao xing limian zuihou yige xing shi

shenme ma?
(Darien, do you know what planet is the most distant?)
D:
[Guessing while playing with his napkin] MOONSTER.
A:
Eh?
D:
MOONSTER.
A:
MOONSTER? Luan jiang!

Shi PLUTO! Hai you shen me TER,
TER, TER.
JIU-JIU-TER. Di yi ge jiu jiao JIU-JIU-TER.
(MOONSTER? Baloney!
It's PLUTO. And some TER, TER,
TER.
JIU-JIU-TER.
The first planet is called JIU-JIUTER. )
It is interesting to see how Aaron broke the name, Jupiter,
into
two phonologically distinct parts and pronounced them in

different manners: The first part "Jiu" was pronounced with a
first tone in Mandarin and the second part with the English
intonation.
He, however, deemed it to be an English word despite
such an unusual combination, and claimed that "the first planet

is Jiu-Jiu-ter".
The next example is another illustration of Aaron's code
switching English into Mandarin to instruct Darien while they
were reading an English word book at Aaron's home:
(91) A:
Deng xia! Wo men lai shu. Yi ge shen me?

(Wait!
Let's count.
One what?)
155
D:
WATER.
A:
WATERFALL.
"F" jiu yao, "F" jiu yao, "F" de sheng yin
shi /f/, zhi dao ma, DARIEN?
Yin wei ni kan "F" jiu
biao shi FALL, shuai dao...yin wei zhe shuiai dao de
yi si, yin wei zhe hao xiang shui zai shuai.
(Waterfall.
"F" needs...the sound of "F" is /f/.
Did
you get it, Darien? Because "F" stands for "fall",
falling down...because "falling down" means...because
the water seems to fall down.)
D:
[No response, playing with Aaron's Brio train set]
Aaron demonstrated his phonological awareness of the sound /f/

and his ability to analyze a semantically interesting compound
noun: waterfall.
However, his enlightening explanation fell on
deaf ears because Darien was too busy connecting railroad tracks
to listen to him.
Darien's usual lack of attention to Aaron's
instruction appeared to be his silent defiance of his friend's

self-imposed role of instructor. This silent defiance was overtly
expressed in example
(92) in which the children were watching the
Magic School Bus in my apartment:

(92) TV:
A:
"THERE ARE ALIENS ALL OVER HERE..."

[To Darien]
Ni zhi dao shen me shi ALIEN ma?
(Do you know what an ALIEN is?)
D:
[Eyes glued to TV, no response]
A:
DARIEN, ni zhi dao shen me shi ALIEN ma?

[Louder] DARIEN, wo zai wen ni shen me shi ALIEN?
(DARIEN, do you know what an ALIEN is? DARIEN, I'm
asking you what an ALIEN is?)
D:
[Eyes staring at TV] Bu zhi dao! Wo zai kan dian shi!

(I don't know!
I'm watching TV!)
Expressing Anger
The language norm between Aaron and Darien was usually Mandarin
or unmarked code-switching.
However, when Aaron was annoyed by
156
Darien's behavior, Aaron would switch to English to express his

anger, a function of encoding authority.
at my apartment.
Example
(93) occurred
Aaron was trying to concentrate on putting
puzzle pieces together. He was annoyed by Darien's incessant

requests to see
his castle andswitched to an English nursery
song to express
his annoyance.
However, Darien did not appear to
discern Aa r o n 's anger and interpreted A a r o n 's song as an

invitation to play with words by singing nonsense in the same
tune.
Darien then asked Aaron to smell his feet, provoking Aaron
to shout at him:
(93) D: Wo pai hao l e . AARON, wo zhen ge dou pai hao le!
(I'm done building the castle.
AARON, I'm finished
building the entire castle!)
A:
[Trying to fit the puzzle pieces together] Hao le!

Wo mei
you kan jian. Wo gang gang jiu you kan jian.
Bu
yao j iao wo kan le hao bu hao?
(Alright!
I don't want to see it again. I looked at it
just a while ago. Don't ask me to see it again, will
you?)
A:
[Singing] BOON, BOON, YOU'RE MAKING ME CRAZY.

BOON, YOU'RE MAKING ME CRAZY.
BOON
D:
[Singing the tune with nonsense] BA, BA, BA...
A:
YOU'RE MAKING ME CRAZY. DID YOU HEAR ME?

I SAID YOU'RE
MAKING ME CRAZY.
I SAID YOU ARE MAKE ME CRAZY. DON'T
DO T H A T ! !
D:
[Laughing] BA, BA, BA.

[Putting his left foot near
Aaron's face] SMELL MY FEET.
SMELL MY FEET.
A:
[Louder] NO!
D:
[Laughing]
YOU SMELL MY FEET!

YOU SMELL MY FEET.
Another similar situation happened when Aaron and Darien

were biting each other at my home. It was not uncommon for these
157
two boys to have an occasional physical fight although each

claimed the other to be his best friend.
When Darien, who was
much taller and stronger, bit Aaron, the latter became angry and
shouted in pain.
He switched to English to demand an apology.
Darien complied with such a strong demand by apologizing but

insisted that the biting had been performed in self-defense.
When he recomposed himself, Aaron switched back to Mandarin to
explain that he only pretended to bite Darien and to ask for
Dariens agreement not to really bite him.:
(94)
A: STOP PLEASE II
WHAT?
Hao tong o!
Ni ye zhua wo a!
(It hurts!)
YOU NEED TO SAY
D:
SORRY.
(You grabbed my arm, too!)
A:
Wo PRETEND yao n i . Ni bu yao gei wo yao hui lai, hao bu

hao? Ni zen me ke yi zhen de yao?
(I PRETENDED to bite you. Don't bite me
for real,
will you? How could you really bite me?)
D:
Ni ye zhua wo a!
(You grabbed my arm, too!)
Acting as a Spokesperson
During the early stage of my data collection, Aaron often
acted as a spokesman for Darien when Darien's command of English
was not yet sufficient to express himself clearly.
One example
occurred when both Aaron and Darien were having lunch at Guk
Hun's house. Darien wanted to have the same beef dish that Aaron
had and expressed his wish to Guk Hun's mother in an incomplete
sentence, which the Korean-dominant housewife did not seem to
understand.
Upon hearing this incomplete request, Aaron
immediately asked Darien a question with the intention of helping

facilitate the communication (KM=Guk Hun's mother):
158
(95) KM:
SIT DOWN, PLEASE.
A:
[To Darien] Ni de
(Yours is bigger.
A:
[To Guk Hun's mom]

CHEESE!
D:
I WANT TASTE.
KM:
TASTE?
A:
Ni yao chi shen me?

(What do you want to eat?)
KM:
[To Darien] TASTE WHAT?
A:
KM:
D:
bi jiao da o. Hao xiang

Smells delicious!)
TASTE GOOD.
ol
YUMMY!CHEESE!
[Pointing to beef] DARIEN WANTS TO TASTE THIS.

AH, THIS.
BEEF.
[To Darien] BEEF?
YUMMY!
In example (96), Darien and Aaron engaged themselves in a

discussion of personal food preference.
Darien repeated several
times that he did not like cheese, but failed to tell Guk Hun's
mother about
his dislike for it.
When she tried to offer him
more cheese,
Aaron immediately took on
the responsibility of
being a spokesman:
(96) D:
Ni zen me yao CHEESE? Ni zen me yao CHEESE ya?

(How come you want CHEESE? Why do you want CHEESE?)
A:
Wo hen xi huan zhe ge.
(I like this.)
D:
Wo bu xi huan CHEESE.
Wo xi huan chi HAM.
(I don't like CHEESE.I like HAM.)
A:
Ren jia shuo CHEESE hen ying yang a!

(People say CHEESE is nutritious.)
D:
Zhe (This) MILK...I DON'T WANT MILK.
KM:
EGG?
A:
HAM, HAM, HAM, HAM, PLEASE. Chao dan, chao fan,

chao dan.
(Fried eggs, fired rice, fried eggs.)
I WANT HAM.
159
KM:
A:
DARIEN, CHEESE?
[To Guk Hun's mother] I TELL YOU, DARIEN DOESN'T
LIKE CHEESE, SO DON'T GIVE HIM CHEESE.
Such a willingness to help his friends was characteristic of

Aaron's personality, which previously was discussed in chapter 3
and demonstrated in example (2).
However, example (2) was
recorded at a much later phase when Darien already was able to

communicate in English clearly most of the time.
It is not
surprising that in example (2) Darien did not appreciate Aaron's

initial offer to help because he wanted to explain to the teacher
how to make a sheath himself.
Aaron, on the other hand, did not
appear to discern Darien's gradual lack of appreciation of and

growing resistance to his well-intended intervention and
continued offering his unsolicited assistance whenever he felt it
was necessary.
Darien's Code-Switching
Experimenting with English
The first characteristic of Darien's earlier speech was that
it contained a lot of English vocabulary in an otherwise Mandarin
sentence.
This intrasentential code-switching was typical of his
unmarked code-switching.
My observation was also corroborated by
his mother's description:

...wo ye juede ta shuo Zhongwen de shihou hui jiaza henduo
Yingwen z i ...
(I also found that he likes to insert English words in his
Mandarin...)
Such switches usually took the form of nouns, as in Darien's
160
tattling on Aaron at the school's playground:

(97) D :
AARON yong SNOW diu wo de FACE y e !

(AARON threw SNOW at my FACE today.)
Sometimes it occurred as a combination of verbs and nouns,

as shown in the next excerpt recorded at Darien's home:
(98) D:
MOMMY, ni wei shen me CHOOSE wo de NAME DARIEN?"

(MOMMY, why did you CHOOSE DARIEN as my NAME?)
One point worth mentioning is that Darien almost always knew

the corresponding Mandarin words for the English he used, perhaps
due to his mother's constant request that he do so.
Emotional Involvement
Sometimes Darien would code-switch from English to Mandarin
when he became emotionally involved.
As previously mentioned,
Darien tended to associate English with his non-Chinese

classmates and followed this rule most of the time, except when
he was mischievous or emotionally upset.
The subsequent
conversation between Darien and the assistant teacher shows how

he code-switched at the beginning of the study when he became
upset:
(99) D:
[Asking Barbara to cut a paper mask] I WANNA MAKE ROBIN.

I WANNA YOU CUT MY EYE. CUT EYE!
I WANNA CUT MY EYE.
I WANNA BE BATMAN. EYES!
I WANNA MAKING [sic] THE
BATMAN.
I WANNA BE BATMAN.
I DON'T WANT BIG EYE.
B:
SHOW ME WHAT YOU WANT.
I'LL MAKE A MASK FOR YOU, OK?
D:
[To a Korean girl taking his paper away]

MINE!
D-.
[To Barbara, start crying]

Wo bu yao CIRCLE de. Wo bu
yao zhe me da yi ge. Wo xiang yong zhe ge de PAPER, hai
you pi feng he MASK.
(I don't want CIRCLEd eyes.
I don't want such big eyes.
I want to use this PAPER to make a cape and a MAS K .)
MY PAPER!
161
This incident also corroborated Barbara's recall of several

occasions when Darien spoke Mandarin to non-Mandarin speaking
children:
...there are times just like "everyone hear me, I'm upset".
And he would speak his language to the class as a whole, you
know, not necessarily angry, but hurt...
Other instances of code-switching that accompanied with
emotional involvement were the occasions when Darien,
in the
middle of a conversation in English with his non Mandarin

speaking friends, switched to
performing certain
Mandarin to prevent others from
tasks. One occasion occurred when Darien's
girlfriend Mica wanted to demonstrate to him that she could pour

juice by herself during the school's snack time.
Seeing that
Mica was about to perform an unsolicited service, Darien first

blurted out "no", followed by a Mandarin declaration of his
capability and then the English version.
The Mandarin was
obviously a slip of the tongue due to his emotional outbursts.

No sooner had he become more composed and realized that Mica did
not understand Mandarin than he immediately offered the English
translation:
(100) M: YOU KNOW,
DARIEN.
I CAN POUR JUICE BY MYSELF.
D:
ME, TOO.
I CAN POUR JUICE BY
MYSELF, TOO.
M:
[Pouring juice for Darien] DO YOU WANT MORE JUICE?
D:
N O ! Wo zhi j i hui d a o ! I CAN DO IT.

(NO! I can pour it myself!)
M:
NO, I CAN DO IT.
D:
ME, TOO.
162
Judith's Code-Switching
Personal Preference
The classification of personal preference was inspired byJudith's mother's description of her younger daughter:
.. .youshiyou we wen ta weishenme gen wo jiang Yingwen, ta
shuo,"ni bushi shuo buhuide yao women duo PRACTICE ma?
Zhongwen wo yijing hui jiang le, Yingwen wo hai buhui, suoyi
yao PRACTICE y a !" Wo youshihou guyi shuo, "aiya!
Ni gen wo
shuo Yingwen wo tingbudong la!" Ta hai hui xiao wo, shuo
"zheme ben, tingbudong jiu yao PRACTICE ya!"
(...sometimes I asked her why she spoke English to me, she
goes, "didn't you tell us to practice what we are not good
at? I can speak Mandarin now, but I can't speak good
English yet, so I need to PRACTICE!" Sometimes I said to
her on purpose, "gee, I have no idea of what you're talking
about if you speak English to me." She would laugh at me
and say "you're so slow.
You should PRACTICE more if you
can't understand English.")
Judith's switch to English sometimes took on the form of
complete utterances, as demonstrated in her conversation with her
mother and her older sister Margie in example (103).
Judith
first claimed in English her ownership of the cup and then asked
Margie if she wanted to play at a Korean girl's house.
She
continued to address Margie in English even when Margie asked her

in Mandarin whether Darien watched television at their home
again.
Later Judith seemed to discern Margie's lack of interest
in speaking English, because Margie continued to address her and

her mother in Mandarin.
Thus Judith switched to Mandarin.
However, she still used some English to warn Margie that her head
might be injured should she wear roller skates on the sidewalk:
(Margie=M)
(101)M:
[To her mother] Wo yao he zhe ge.

(I want to drink this.)
163
J:
[To
her sister] YOU HAVE THE WRONG CUP!
M:
Zhe
shi mama gei wo de.
J:
[Referring to a Korean girl's house]

DO YOU WANT TO GO TO HIS HOUSE?
M:
NO!
(NO!
J:
DARIEN ALWAYS WANT TO SEE A MOVIE TODAY.

MOVIE AND SHUT THE MOVIE.
M:
[To Judith]
Ni kandao wo de ROLLER SKATE ma?
(Did you see my ROLLER SKATE [s] ?)
M:
[To her mother] Wo de ROLLER SKATE ne?

(Where are my ROLLER SKATEs?)
J:
Jiejie, ni bu neng chuang ROLLER SKATE xia qu. Jie

jie ni bu yao tui, tui, tui yo!
Yao shi ni chuang
nei xie jiu BUMPY BUMPY DOWN.
HURT YOUR HEAD!
(Sis, you can't wear your ROLLER SKATEs on the
sidewalk.
Don't push, push, push too hard!
If you
wear those you go BUMPY, BUMPY DOWN.)
(Mom gave me this.)
DARIEN you kan wo men dian shi le.

DARIEN watched our TV again, right?)
HE OPEN THE
It took three turns for Judith to realize that Margie was

not in the mood to speak English because these two sisters
usually spoke to each other in English.
Another occasion took place when Margie came home with an
Easter basket full of candies.
No sooner had Margie switched to
English to call Darien than Judith immediately followed suit.

She spoke English to Margie and Darien throughout the first half
of the conversation:
(102)M:
NO, NO! Buyao Yuan Yuan kan. Jiao DARIEN chulai.

(I don't want Judith to see it. Tell DARIEN to come
o u t .)
M:
[Calling for Darien]

YOU!
THERE'S SOMETHING SURPRISE FOR
J:
SOMETHING SURPRISE FOR YOU!

[Darien coming out to look at Judith]
164
J:
SOMETHING SURPRISE AT HERt
M:
I GOT SOMETHING SURPRISE, DARIEN.

YOU CAN NOT PECK
[sic] . I DON'T WANT YOU TO PECK [sic] .
J:
NO PEEKING!
D:
Shi shei gei ni de?
(Who gave you this?)
J:
[Pointing to a candy] MARGIE, DOYOU WANT TO
EAT THIS?
However, despite her preference for speaking English with

people whom she knew to be bilinguals, Judith sometimes spoke
Mandarin or code-switched English intrasententially into Mandarin
if her conversational partners continued speaking Mandarin.
example,
For
in the latter half of the conversation, when both Margie
and Darien started talking to each other in Mandarin, Judith

followed suit:
M:
[Showing Darien the basket] Zhe CREAM hen tian, ni

xiang chi ma? PEANUT BUTTER zai xia mian. Zhe ge jiu
shi CREAM.
I SINK [sic] hen hao chi.
(This CREAM is very sweet.
You want this? PEANUT
BUTTER is in here. This is CREAM.
I SINK [sic] it's
tasty.)
D:
Wo shi FIREMAN.
(I'm a FIREMAN.)
M:
[Pretending to be the bunny's mother]

(I'm her mom.)
J:
Na wo ne?
M:
Ni shi ta jiejie.
Wo shi ta mama.
(What about me?)

(You're her sister.)
The previous two examples not only demonstrated Judith's

preference for speaking English but also her sensitivity to
participants' willingness to speak English.
If the interlocutors
continued to speak Mandarin, she would demonstrate her language

flexibility and switch accordingly.
165
Influence of Physical Settings

Due to the influences of participants (16% for addressee
specification) and topics
(15% for referential function) on the
children's code-switching, one might wonder if physical settings

also exerted similar influences on their language use.
To answer
this question, I tabulated the absolute numbers and the

percentages for each function in each setting (see Table 9).
The
absolute numbers for each general function for each child in each
setting are displayed in Table 10.
Then I compared and
contrasted the individual frequencies across the different

physical settings for situational code-switching (i.e., addressee
specification and referential function)
and conversational code
switching (i.e., unmarked code-switching, correction, explicit

language awareness, etc.).
166
Table 9
A Breakdown of the General Functions By Settings
Situational
Code-switching
-Addressee
Specification
-Referential
Function
Conversational
Code-switching
-Unmarked
code-switching
Metalinguistic
Awareness
-Correction
-Explicit
language
awareness
Communicative
Strategies
-Reiteration
-Explication
Message Form
-Playacting
-Word Play
-Quotation
Discourse
Routines
-Interj ection
-Negation
-Apology
Intentional
Code-switching
-Teasing
-Encoding
authority
-Excluding
an audience
Total
School
Home
(%)
Play
Group
n
(%)
35 (56%)
10
(16%)
17 (28%)
62
15 (27%)
23
(41%)
18 (32%)
56
25 (22%)
47
(42%)
40 (36%)
112
6 (30%)
4 (29%)
6 (30%)
4 (29%)
8 (40%)
6 (42%)
20
14
6 (35%)
5 (33%)
4 (24%)
4 (27%)
7 (41%)
6 (40%)
17
15
7 (33%)
3 (25%)
0
8 (38%)
4 (33%)
1 (33%)
6 (29%)
5 (42%)
2 (67%)
21
12
3
5 (25%)
7 (42%)
2 (29%)
9 (45%)
5 (29%)
2 (29%)
6 (30%)
5 (29%)
3 (42%)
20
17
7
2 (100%)
1 (33%)
0
0
0
2 (67%)
2
3
2 (100%)
(%)
167
Table 10
Breakdown of the General Functions by Each Child in Each Setting
School
A
D
n
n
Situational
Code-switching
10
-Addressee
Specification
-Referential 5
Conversational
Code-switching
8
-Unmarked
Code-switching
Metalinguistic
Awareness
-Correction
3
1
-Explicit
language
awareness
Communicative
Strategies
-Reiteration 2
-Explication 2
Message
Forms
-Playacting
2
-Word Play
1
-Quotation
0
Discourse
Routines
-Interjection 2
-Negation
3
1
-Apology
Intentional
Code-switching
-Teasing
0
-Encoding
1
authority
-Excluding
1
an audience
J
n
Home
A
D
n
n
J
n
Play Group
A
D
J
n
n
n
15
10
10
10
17
20
10
15
16
2
2
1
1
3
2
2
1
3
3
3
1
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
2
2
1
1
1
3
3
2
2
1
1
3
1
0
2
1
0
2
2
0
2
1
1
4
1
0
2
3
1
2
2
1
2
0
0
2
2
1
1
2
0
2
2
1
4
0
1
3
3
0
2
2
1
3
1
2
1
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
168
Addressee Specification
Addressee specification in school accounted for over 50% of
this category's occurrence.
two factors.
This probably can be attributed to
First, there were more non-Mandarin-speaking
children interacting with the focal children in school.
Second,
all three children, including Judith sometimes, tended to

converse with each other at school in Mandarin (or unmarked codeswitching).
Therefore, they had to switch between English and
Mandarin in order to direct their messages to different

participants.
In contrast, the participants at each individual
child's home and in the local play group at my apartment mostly

spoke Mandarin, except for the Korean-dominant boy Guk Hun in the
local play group, and the monolingual girl Gabi who sometimes
played at Judith's house.
Referential Function
The more frequent occurrence of referential code-switching
at the children's homes (41%) and my apartment
(32%), compared to
school (27%), was probably due to their frequent running

commentary on action heroes(for Aaron, n=5 at home, and n=6 at my
apartment; for Darien, n=8 at home, and n=5 at my apartment; for
Judith, n=4 at home, and n=4 at my apartment).
The teachers
usually forbade them to talk about this topic for fear that they
might pretend to be these action heroes and fight one another.
In contrast, the children's mothers and I did not prohibit them
from discussing this topic.
Therefore, instances of referential
169
code-switching occurred more frequently at both the children's

homes and my apartment than at school.
Unmarked Code-Switching
The high frequency of unmarked code-switching at the
children's homes
(42%) and in the local play group (36%) might be
again attributed to the participants.
The participants in these
two settings were primarily the focal children (i.e., at my

apartment)
and their mothers and siblings
(i.e., in the home
setting) .
Almost all of the participants, except Guk Hun at my
apartment and Gabi at Judith's house, were from the focal

children's speech community.
As a result, they were more prone
to use the normal communication medium of bilinguals (i.e.,

unmarked code-switching)
to exchange information.
Metalinguistic Awareness
Correction.
The frequencies of occurrence for correction
across the three settings were 30% at school, 30% at the

children's homes, and 40% at my apartment. It is difficult to
explain the slightly higher frequency of occurrence for
correction at my apartment.
It is likely that the small
differences might be a result of chance.
Or it might be that the
children interacted more intensively with one another and, thus,

had more opportunities to correct each other's mistakes.
Another
possible factor might be my frequent questioning, which exerted

more of a force on the children's correct language use.
170
Explicit language awareness.
The frequencies of occurrence
for explicit language awareness across the three settings were

29% (n=4) at school, 29% (n=4) at home, and 42% (n=6) at my
apartment.
The slightly higher frequency of occurrence of
explicit language awareness at my apartment seemed to be

attributed to the fact that Aaron engaged in more explicit
language discussion at my apartment
(n=3) than at school
(n=l)
and at home (n=l). My questioning might also contribute to some

of Aaron's language discussion, too.
Communicative Strategies
The slightly higher frequencies for explication (40%) and
reiteration (41%) functions at my apartment compared to at their
homes
(27% for explication, and 24% for reiteration) or at school
(33% for explication, and 35% for reiteration) probably were due
to my asking the children to produce the Mandarin equivalents for
English words.
Message Forms
Playacting.
The slightly higher frequency for playacting at
home (38%) than at school (33%) and at my home (29%) might be due
to the fact that Judith engaged in more playacting with her
sister at home (n=4 at home, compared to n=2 at school and my
home respectively). Given Judith's preference for playing house,
it is no wonder that she engaged in more playacting at home with
her sister who had the same interest than with the boys who liked
to play action heroes.
171
Word plav.
The slight higher frequency for word play at my
apartment (42%) than at the children's home (33%) and at school

(25%) probably was due to Aaron's more initiation of word play.
The fact that Aaron and Darien interacted more frequently at my
home might also have contributed to their slightly higher
frequency of word play.
In contrast,
the boys usually were
assigned to different groups at school.

teacher,
According to the head
"they tend to have silly talks when they sit together."
This explanation tended to indicate that interlocutors played an

important role in the boys' word play.
They tended to engage in
word play more often when they were together than when they were
with other k ids.
This interpretation also explains why the boys
engaged in word play less frequently at school than at my

apartment.
Quotation.
The boys' code-switching for quotation only
occurred once at Darien's home and twice at my apartment (n=l for

Aaron, n=l for Darien). Darien used code-switching for quotation
when he retold a scene from "Alladin".
He and Aaron also code
switched to recount a scene from "Lion King" after watching the

video at my home.
Judith, on the other hand, did not show much
interest in the boys' discussion. The fact that Judith did not
code-switch to quote seemed related to her dislike for "Lion
King" or unfamiliarity with the scenes in the video.
Had I
played other videos such as "Swan Princess" or "Pocahontas,"

Judith might have code-switched to quote the characters.
172
Discourse Routines
Interjection.
Darien and Judith used interjections more
frequently at home than at school or at my apartment

10, n=4 for Darien, and n=3 for Judith).
(see Table
Examination of the
transcripts revealed that 2 of Darien's 4 interjections and 2 of

Judith's 3 interjections at home were recorded during their
solitary play.
For example, when one of the toy trains fell off
the wooden track, Darien said,

(SHOOT!
"SHOOT!
How come it fell again).
Zenme you diao le"
Judith exclaimed
"OOPSIE[OOPS]" when she was playing with a computer game and

accidentally dropped the mouse to the floor.
The remaining
interjections (n=2 for Darien, and n=l for Judith) were recorded
when Darien and Judith interacted with their respective family
members.
In contrast, the children's interjections recorded at school
and at my apartment all occurred when they were interacting with
other children and adults.
This does not mean that Darien and
Judith did not engage in solitary play at school or at my home.

They did.
But I did not record any interjections during their
solitary play.
Negation.
The higher frequency for negation at school
(42%)
as compared to at home (29%) and my apartment (29%) might be due

to the fact that the boys had more opportunities to say no (n=3
for Aaron, n=2 for Darien) during interactions with other
children at school.
The fact that no negation was recorded at
Darien's home was not too surprising because he had no siblings
173
to whom he could say no.
Judith, on the other hand, seemed to be
more rebellious at home than at school.

"ta laoshi gen wo changfandaio.
bu"
Ta cong bu gan gen laoshi shuo
(She likes to rebel against my wish.
no to her teacher.)
According to her mother,
She never dares to say
Judith's more frequent use of negation to
her mother (n=2) and sister (n=l)at home than to her peers
(n=l)
at home and at my apartment respectively seemed to prove her

mother's point.
Apology.
The slightly higher frequency for apology at my
apartment (42%) than at school (29%) and at home (29%) might be

due to the fact that the boys argued more often with each other
at my place than at school.
At school, the head teacher usually
assigned Aaron and Darien to different groups to participate in

different activities.
By doing so, the head teacher reduced the
chances that the boys might argue with each other. In contrast,
Aaron and Darien usually played together at my apartment.
Thus,
it was more likely that they had more verbal fights at my home
and they had to apologize.
Judith, on the other hand, usually
behaved well at school and never engaged in serious verbal fights

with other children during my observations.
Therefore, no
apologies were recorded for Judith.

The nonoccurrence of intentional code-switching at the
children's homes might be attributed to the fact that it would be
difficult, if not inappropriate, for the children to forge a
different relationship with their mothers.
Besides, it is
174
unlikely for them to exclude an ethnically different audience at

home because the participants were their siblings and mothers
most of the time.
Also, it is not surprising that Aaron
accounted for four out of the five incidents
(n=2 at school, and
n=2 at my apartment, see Table 10), given his mature personality

and dominant style during interactions with Darien and Judith.
Summary
Examination of the frequency distribution of each function
across the settings suggested that participants seemed to play a
more influential role than settings.
The children code-switched
for unmarked code-switching more frequently at home and during

play group because the participants were primarily MandarinEnglish speaking bilinguals at those settings.
In a similar way,
they code-switched for addressee specification more frequently at

school because more non-Mandarin-speaking children interacted
with them there.
They had to switch between Mandarin and English
in order to direct messages to different speakers.
In addition,
the slightly higher frequencies of playacting at home might be

attributed to the composition of participants
siblings) at home.
(parents and
The slightly higher frequencies for teasing
at school, encoding authority at school and at my home, and for

excluding an ethnically different audience at home all seemed to
related to the participants.
However, few examples suggested that, in addition to
participants, settings also exert some influence on the
For example, they used more
175
referential code-switching at home and in the play group because

their parents and I did not forbid them to talk about action
heroes, whereas their teachers did.
Thus the teachers' rule
could have resulted in the children's code-switching for

referential function less frequently at school.
In a similar
vein, the slightly higher frequencies for word play at home and
at my apartment than at school might be due to the different
opportunities that the children had for interacting with each
other at each setting.
To sum up, participants seemed to influence more of the
children's code-switching than settings did.
The saliency of
participants overrode that of physical settings.
As a result,
physical settings did not seem to play a decisive role in the

The Focal Children's English Proficiency and
Their Code-Switching Patterns
Table 11 shows the frequencies for the three children's
intrasentential
(English words and phrases in the Mandarin
structure and Mandarin phrases in the English structure) versus

intersentential code-switching (from English to Mandarin and from
Mandarin to English). The children predominantly code-switched at
the single word level
Judith).
(54% for Aaron, 73% for Darien, and 45% for
The children also used Mandarin sentences that
contained English words and phrases far more frequently than they
used English sentences with Mandarin words and phrases.
Example
(58) is one of the very few instances in which I recorded the
176
boys using Mandarin in an English sentence:

dan'
(be a fool)?"
"DO YOU WANT TO 'ben
The children's use of intrasentential code
switching in Mandarin and not in English seemed to be a marker of

their language dominance in Mandarin.
Table 11
The Children's Intrasentential vs. Intersentential Code-Switching
Intrasentential CS
E in Ma
Intersentential CS
M in Eb
E to Mc
Total
to Ed
Word
Phrase
Phrase
Aaron
119(54%)
54(25%)
1(1%)
29 (13%)
17(8%)
220
Darien
206 (73%)
55 (19%)
1(1%)
11 (4%)
9 (3%)
282
Judith
79 (45%)
21 (12%)
2 (1%)
33(19%)
40 (23%)
175
Note.
3 E in M=English in the Mandarin sentences.
b M in
E=Mandarin in the English sentences. c E to M=from English to

Mandarin. d M to E=from Mandarin to English. e There was no
single Mandarin words in the English sentences in the corpus.
In addition, the children's ability to code switch intersententially appeared to correlate with their English
proficiency.
Aaron and Judith, the more proficient of the three
children, were able to code-switch intersententially across the

two languages
(21% for Aaron and 42% for Judith) much more
frequently than Darien (7%). Although Judith's English

proficiency was rated a little lower than Aaron's English
177
proficiency in terms of fluency and pronunciation (see Table 2,

p. 60), she produced more intersentential code-switching.
It
could be that the ability to code switch intersententially is

more directly related to the children's knowledge of vocabulary
and grammatical rules than their pronunciation or fluency.
Although I rated Judith's English vocabulary between levels 3 and
4, the assistant teacher rated it at level 4, which is at the
same level with Aaron's.
On the other hand, it could be that
both the assistant and my evaluations of Judith's language

proficiency were impressionistic, which might result in
inaccurate assessment.
It appeared that the ability to code-switch
intersententially depended on whether a child had reached a
certain level of English proficiency.
Once a child's English
proficiency was at or above that level, possessing slightly

higher English proficiency did not necessarily mean that he/she
would produce more intersentential code-switching than those
whose English proficiencies were a little lower. The fact that
Judith produced more intersentential code-switching than Aaron
might be attributed to her preference for English and her English
reading ability.
In addition, Judith's sister, who sometimes
conversed with her in English also might have contributed to

Judith's frequent use of intersentential code-switching.
Darien's use of intrasentential code-switching seemed to
show a developmental progression that corresponded with his
developing English proficiency.
At the beginning of the study,
178
Darien code-switched single English words into Mandarin sentences

(73%) .
In example
(103) , which was recorded at his home during
the first month of my study, Darien did not yet possess knowledge
of past tense or plural nouns in English.
Although he code-
switched in English, the syntax was mainly in Mandarin. :

(103) D:
However,
MOMMY, ni kan LEAF dou FALL DOWN le.

(MOMMY, look, the LEAF [LEAVES] all FALL [FELL] DOWN!)
near the end of my study, Darien's single noun/verb
switches were gradually replaced by switches of noun and verb

phrases as he gained better command of English (19%).
Example
(104) was recorded when Darien watched TV with his mother at

home:
(104)TV: [Playing loud music]
D:
[Nodding his
FAVORITE.
Wo
(This kind of
my ears would
head to Hui-Tzu]
Zhe zhong MUSIC shi wo
erduo yi ting jiu shuo DO IT AGAIN.
music is my FAVORITE. Once I hear it,
say DO IT AGAIN.)
Examples (105) and (106) were recorded during the last month of
my data collection.
In example
(105) , Darien wanted his mother
to read him a story:

(105) D:
MOMMY, ni ke bu ke yi READ ME A STORY, PLEASE?

(MOMMY, can you READ ME A STORY, PLEASE?)
Example (106) was again recorded when Darien wanted his

mother to read him a story:
(106) D:
DM:
D:
MOMMY, ni dou mei you READ ME A BEDTIME STORY.

(MOMMY, you didn't READ ME A BEDTIME STORY.)
Wo jintian hen lei.
(I'm very tired today.)
Na ke bu ke yi PLAY THIS GAME WIF[sic] ME?

(Can you PLAY THIS GAME WITH ME, then?)
179
Example (107) is one of the few intersentential code

switching utterances Darien produced.
He code-switched
intersententially from Mandarin to English when he wanted to go

to the bathroom at my apartment:
(107) D:
AARON, ganquai la!

(AARON, hurry up!)
IT'S MY TURN NOW!
The switches to English to ask his mother to read him a story in

examples
example
pattern:
(105) and (106), and to ask Aaron to take turns in

(107) seemed to indicate a change in his code-switching
From switching at the single-word level to switching at
the phrase-level or even the sentence level.
Although the
English he code-switched sometimes involves formulaic phrases,

his progression from code-switching words to phrases to sentences
appears to be attributable to the progress he has made in his
second language development.
Summary
The children's language proficiencies seemed related to
their code-switching patterns.
Aaron and Judith, with higher
English proficiencies, used intersentential code-switching more

frequently than Darien, whose English proficiency was
comparatively lower.
The fact that Judith used more
intersentential code-switching than Aaron could be attributed to

the assistant and the researcher's impressionistic rating.
could be due to factors such as her reading ability, and the
language spoken by her siblings.
A developmental trend seemed to exist between Darien's
language development and his code-switching patterns.
As he
Or it
180
progressed in his English, he was able to switch from single

English words to formulaic phrases into Mandarin sentences.
He
was also able to occasionally use intersentential code-switching.
181
CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, AND IMPLICATIONS
Summary
The current study sought to understand the code-switching
behavior of three Mandarin-English speaking preschool children
across three different settings: home, school and play group.
Their language use over a period of four months was observed and
analyzed.
Data from audio- and videotaped recordings, on-site
field notes, and a reflective field journal were triangulated

with data from parent and teacher interviews to obtain an "emic"
perspective on the focal children's code-switching behavior.
The study focused on understanding the influence of
different physical settings and the mother's language input on
the children's code-switching behavior.
It also examined the
extent to which functions previously posited by researchers

studying bilingual adults' code-switching (Appel & Muysken, 1987;
Gumperz, 1982; Myers-Scotton, 1983, 1993) and children's codeswitching (among others, De Houwer, 1990; Fantini, 1985; McClure,
1977, 1981; Orellena, 1994a) characterized the Mandarin-English
speaking children's language behavior.
Finally, it sought to
understand the relationship between the children's language

proficiency and their code-switching patterns.
As stated in Chapter 1, the following research questions
guided my initial data collection:
1.
What are the functions or purposes of young bilingual
Mandarin-English speaking children's code-switching?
182
2.
What characterizes the children's code-switching from
Mandarin to English and vice versa?

Later, three more salient questions emerged from my
sociolinguistic analysis.
3.
They were:
What is the relationship between the mothers' use of
code-switching and the children's use of code-switching?

4.
To what extent do different physical settings have an
influence on the children's code-switching behavior?

5.
What is the relationship between the children's English
proficiency and their code-switching patterns?

I have organized my discussion, so that I discuss the first
question under the heading of functional characteristics of the
children's code-switching, the second research question under the
heading of language direction of the children's code-switching,
the third research question under the heading of language
socialization, the fourth research question under the heading of
physical settings and the children's language choice, and the
fifth question under the heading of the relationship between
second language proficiency and code-switching.
the limitations of the study.
I also present
I conclude this chapter with
research and educational implications.

Discussion
Functional Characteristics of the Children's Code-Switching
Overall, the children's code-switching was characterized by
16
general functions
(see Table 8).
to bilingual adults' code-switching.
Of these, seven were similar

They were addressee
183
specification,
reiteration, quotation,
interjections
(Gumperz,
1982), referential function (Appel & Muysken, 1987), encoding

authority, and excluding an ethnically different audience
(Myers-
Scotton, 1993).
In regard to the remaining nine functions, six of them were
similar to functions identified in other bilingual children's
code-switching:
Unmarked code-switching (Fantini, 1985),
playacting (Fantini, 1985; Orellana, 1994), negation (Stavans,

1992), word play, correction, and explicit language awareness
Houwer, 1990).
(De
I also identified three functions that rarely
have been documented before.
They were explication, apology and
ceasing.
Close examination of the different functions of the
children's code-switching revealed that, similar to the findings
of other researchers
(Cheng & Butler 1989; Genishi, 1981;
McClure, 1981, among others),
the focal children's code
switching, both intra- and intersentential, was more a function

of their bilingual communicative competence than of first
language loss or second-language deficiency.
Although the
children sometimes switched to English to express culturally

bound items
(e.g., cartoon names and ethnic foods) that they
could not express in Mandarin,

comparatively low.
the frequency of such a switch was
Their intrasentential code-switching during
their interactions with each another, their respective mothers,

and the researcher signaled a bilingual identity shared by their
listeners.
They built on the coexistence of alternate forms in
184
their language repertoire to create meanings that could be

understood only by members of the same bilingual speech
community.
In order to highlight what characterized the children's
code-switching, I have thematically grouped the functions and
presented my discussion according to the following themes:
the
children's sensitivities to the interlocutors' language abilities

(addressee specification) and bilingual competence (reiteration,
explication,
interjections, negation, apology, quotation, and
referential code-switching); their emerging bilingual identity

(unmarked code-switching and playacting) and ethnic awareness
(teasing, excluding an ethnically different audience); their
metalinguistic awareness of both languages
(word play,
correction, and explicit language awareness); and attributes of

bilingual adults' code-switching (the predominance of
conversational code-switching).
As can be seen, some of the
functionally different categories were subsumed under one theme.

For instance, unmarked code-switching and playacting were grouped
together, as were word play and correction.
The Children's Sensitivities to the Interlocutors' Language
Abilities and Their Bilingual Competence
The children's frequent code-switching between English and
Mandarin to address a particular audience was an indication of
their awareness of and sensitivity to the linguistic backgrounds
of their conversational partners.
They rarely addressed a
familiar speaker in the wrong language without immediate self
185
repair (example 37).
Such code-switching also indicated that a
situational factor--participant--played a determining role in the

children's developing language decision system (Grosjean, 1982,
p. 204).
This result corroborates the findings of Fantini
and McClure (1977, 1981).
(1985)
Their respective research with
Mexican-American children (from birth to 9 and ages 2-9

respectively) indicated that the earliest systematic code
switching was a function of participant.
The children's code-switching for addressee specification
appeared to be rule-governed rather than arbitrary behavior.
Judith, similar to the Spanish-English speaking subjects in
Marcon and Coon's
(1983) study and the 3-year-old Dutch-English
speaking girl in De Houwer's (1990) study, expected bilingual

speakers to respond to her use of their second language, English.
She sometimes addressed Aaron, Darien and other Mandarin-English
speaking bilingual adults in English because she knew they
understood her.
Her preferred rule of addressee specification
seemed to be: Speak English to non-Mandarin speakers and

Mandarin-English bilinguals.
However, she also demonstrated her
bilingual flexibility by switching to Mandarin to address

Mandarin-English speaking bilinguals when they persisted in
speaking it (examples 101 & 102).
The boys, on the other hand,
tended to choose their languages on the basis of the

interlocutors' primary language.
In other words, they usually
followed the one-person one-language rule:
Speak Mandarin to
monolingual Mandarin speakers and Mandarin-English bilinguals,
186
and English to non-Mandarin speakers.
However, they were also
flexible and occasionally deviated from their one-person onelanguage rule to accommodate their conversational partners" codeswitching (example 37).
Furthermore, the children's use of this situational codeswitching (i.e., address specification)
and their use of six
conversational code-switching functions
(i.e., explication,
reiteration,
interjections, negation, apology, and quotation)
also indicated their bilingual competence.
Cheng and Butler
(1989) claimed that when code-switching is used for the purpose

of maximizing communication, it should be deemed as an asset
rather than a deficiency of bilingual speakers.
The children's
code-switching for addressee specification was a manifestation of

their bilingual competence because they were able to direct
messages in two different languages to different speakers.
Their
code-switching for explanation and reiteration while addressing

the same speaker also demonstrated their bilingual competency.
Whenever one language failed them, they immediately switched to
the other for effective expression or to strengthen the content
or essence of their message (examples 67-74) .
In addition, the
children's effective switch to English for interjections to

express their emotions: angry ("no"), hurt ("ouch"), happy
("yeah"), sorry ("sorry") was another aspect of their
communicative competence.
Aaron and Darien also exhibited this
competence when they quoted a person.
They usually quoted a
person in the language in which the original quote occurred
187
(example 79). Thus, the focal children's switching between

languages for explication, reiteration, discourse routine (i.e.,
interjections, negation, & apology), and quotation demonstrated
their communicative attempts to convey the right message to the
right person at the right place and time.
Such an effort also
indicates that they were able to draw upon available linguistic,

cognitive, and social resources to achieve effective communica
tion .
The Children's Emerging Bilingual Identity and Ethnic Awareness
The children's unmarked code-switching and playacting
displayed their emerging bilingual identity.
The normal
communication medium among the children usually was Mandarin or

unmarked code-switching (i.e., English in Mandarin utterances).
While the use of Mandarin implied their ethnic identity, the
frequent use of unmarked code-switching seemed to signal their
emerging bilingual identity. Their unmarked code-switching
distinguished them from their monolingual English classmates and
monolingual Mandarin-speaking counterparts in China and Taiwan.
It only occurred when the children interacted with one another or
with people they recognized as bilinguals.
They did not use
unmarked code-switching when interacting with monolingual English

speakers or monolingual Mandarin speakers.
Similar to the rule-governed behavior demonstrated in their
code-switching for addressee specification, their use of unmarked
code-switching also was participant oriented and rule-governed.
According to Aaron's mother, when Aaron visited Taiwan last
188
Christmas, he only spoke Mandarin:

"Ta gen linju de xiaohai zhi shuo guoyu.
Yingwen, ZhongYing jiaza dou bu jian le."
(He only spoke Mandarin to the kids from the neighborhood.
I never heard him speak English or code-switch languages.)
Darien's mother also revealed that Darien did not use codeswitching when playing with a monolingual Mandarin-speaking boy
in his neighborhood:
"Wo wen ta weishenme gen Bao Bao shuohua de shihou bu ZhongYing jiaza.
Ta shuo, 'Yinwei Bao Bao meiyou shangxue, buhui
shuo Yingwen."
(I asked him why he didn't code-switch when he played with
Bao Bao. He said, "Because Bao Bao does not go to school;
he can't speak English.)
Judith's mother told me that on the phone Judith only spoke
Mandarin to her relatives in China because she knew that they did
not speak English.
Moreover, the children's code-switching for playacting
demonstrated their developing bilingual identity.
what roles they were playing, imaginary superheroes
Power Ranger, Spiderman, etc.) or real people
Regardless of
(Superman,
(generic mothers,
fathers, brothers, sisters, teachers, etc.), they code-switched

from Mandarin or unmarked code-switching to English, the societal
language to enact the roles.
Other researchers who have studied
children's bilingualism (Fantini, 1985; Orellana, 1994a;

Saunders, 1988) reported similar findings for children from other
language backgrounds.
In her study of young Spanish-English bilingual children's
code-switching, Orellana
(1994a) considered the children's use of
English to portray superheroes to be a characteristic of their
189
ongoing bilingual identity construction. According to her, this

construction of bilingual identity reflected the power
differentials associated with the children's primary language and
the dominant language in the larger society.
She raised the
possibility that, during the process of identity construction,

her children's self-voice of "Spanish"
(their primary language)
might gradually be replaced by the societal voice "English.
In
fact, she argued that their use of English during playacting

might well be an omen of the children's future loss of their
primary language.
In a follow-up study, Orellana
(1994b)
reported that after three years the children no longer spoke

Spanish spontaneously with each other or with their parents,
showed reluctance to use Spanish even when pressed to do so, and
were limited in their abilities to express themselves in Spanish.
In a national longitudinal survey of children who had learned
English as a second language in a variety of school settings
(bilingual, ESL, and English only), Wong-Fillmore (1991a, 1991b)
reported that immigrant and American Indian bilingual preschool
children significantly demonstrated loss of their home languages
during their acquisition of English in the United States.
Given that the children in this study also were living in
the United States, where English is the dominant language, one
might wonder if their emerging bilingual identity also implied
the gradual loss of their primary language, and thus their ethnic
identity.
The data from this study (i.e., observational data
and parental report, see Table 3) did not indicate any loss in
190
the primary language of these children at this time.
All three
continued to use Mandarin or unmarked code-switching in most of

their interactions.
In addition, they were fully aware of their
ethnic identity and seemed to value it.
Their positive attitude
toward their own language and ethnicity probably can be

attributed to the lack of native language stigmatization at
school, the widespread occurrence of bilingualism in their local
community, and the value that was attached to bilingualism at
home. On more than one occasion, I heard the children comment on
their classmates' and their own ethnicities:
(108)A:
YUPA shi Ribenren.

Taiwanren.
(YUPA is Japanese.
Taiwanese.)
CHEE HANG shi KOREAN.

CHEE HANG is KOREAN.
Wo shi
I'm
D:
Wo yeshi Taiwanren.
Wo shi zai Meiguo sheng de
Taiwanren.
(I'm Taiwanese, too.
I m a Taiwanese who was born in
the U S .)
A:
Dui, wo yeshi zai Meiguo sheng de Taiwanren.

JUDITH shi
zai Meiguo sheng de CHINESE.
(Yes, I'm also a Taiwanese born in the US.
JUDITH is a
CHINESE who was born in the U S .)
Their ethnic awareness also was exhibited in the boys'

marked use of code-switching as an ethnically-based exclusion
strategy (example 89) and Darien and Judith's intentional
switching to Mandarin to tease their non-Mandarin-speaking
classmate (examples 85 & 86).
All of this evidence seems to
suggest that the children were able to maintain their own ethnic
identity while taking on a new bilingual identity.
On the other hand, the children's increased use of unmarked
191
code-switching and their preference for speaking English may not

bode well for their continued use of Mandarin.
It is possible
that only Darien will maintain his native language due to his
mother's insistence that he know and use Mandarin; whereas, Aaron
and Judith could gradually lose their native language proficiency
due to the lack of maternal or paternal insistence on their
maintaining their Mandarin.
The Children's Metalincruistic Awareness
According to Pratt and Grieve (1984), metalinguistic
awareness refers to the "ability to think about and reflect upon
the nature and functions of language"
(p. 2).
In her review of
studies on metalinguistic awareness among monolingual children,

Clark (1978) commented that "explicit comments on language seem
to begin around the age of three"
(p. 22). Researchers studying
bilingual preschool children also have reported similar

manifestations of such metalinguistic awareness
Houwer, 1990).
Clyne
(Clyne, 1987; De
(1987) found that a precocious English-
German- speaking girl Joanna started making explicit comments

about the use of the two languages right after her second
birthday.
De Houwer
(1990) discovered that an English-Dutch
speaking girl Kate made most of her metalinguistic statements

about Dutch (e.g., corrections of the language use of others or
comments about it and direct statements about language) after her
third birthday.
I found manifestations of the children's metalinguistic
awareness in their code-switching.
Although I recorded evidence
192
of the children's metalinguistic awareness when they were four

years old, this does not mean that prior to my study, the
children did not demonstrate such awareness. The types of
metalinguistic awareness demonstrated by the children's code
switching included word play (example 78), explicit language
awareness (examples 60-63), and immediate correction of others"
mistakes
(examples 47-58).
Some writers argue that bilingual children possess a

heightened or at least a different kind of metalinguistic
awareness than monolingual children.
Ben Zeev (1977) pointed out
that bilinguals become aware of their languages as internally

consistent systems more intensively than do monolinguals.
In a
description of his daughter's bilingual development, Leopold

(1939-1949) showed that she separated form and content in
language at an early age.
As Leopold (1961) expressed it, there
was "a noticeable looseness of the link between the phonetic word
and its meaning"
(p. 358). In a similar vein, the boys in this
study demonstrated their capability to separate form from its

content in example
(63) in which Darien and Aaron had a
discussion about the appropriate English form for the meaning

"fen kai"
(to separate).
Implicit in their discussion was an
awareness of the arbitrary relationship between the phonological

realization of a word and its meaning.
Tunmer and Herriman (1984) considered children's awareness
of the arbitrary nature between form and its referential object
to be significant for the control of cognitive processes.
They
193
reported that this awareness facilitates the control of

attentional procedures to select and process specific linguistic
information.
this claim.
Bialystok (1986) provided evidence in support of

She used a grammaticality judgment and correction
task in an experimental study to compare monolingual and

bilingual children's
(ages 5, 7, and 9) ability to analyze
linguistic knowledge and to control linguistic processing.

Bialystok found that bilingual children, compared to monolingual
children, performed better on tasks requiring high levels of
control.
She concluded that bilingualism helped children solve
problems involving high levels of control.
Darien's capability
to discern Aaron's grammatically accurate but semantically

incorrect Mandarin translation of "magic school bus"
(the literal
meaning of Aaron's Mandarin translation was "magic car") in

example (62) seemed to demonstrate a control of processing
similar to the bilingual children in Bialystok's study.
The children also demonstrated their ability to reflect on
language by code-switching to correct one another's mistakes.
In
order to correct others' mistakes, the children had to have an

awareness of language as an object in itself.
In addition, they
had to have metalinguistic awareness that allowed them to

separate language from its communicative function.
During
correction, they had to compare incoming signals with their

knowledge of the relevant linguistic structures.
Peer correction among second language preschoolers has, to
my knowledge, only been documented by Norrick (1988).
Norrick
194
kept developmental diaries and audio-recorded his two

German/English preschool children's language behavior over a
period of nine months.
After analyzing 12 hours of tape
recordings, Norrick reported that his older child, Nick, began

correcting his younger sister at age four years three months.
At
first, corrections focused on facts, then on language usage and

style, and subsequently on interference.
The younger child (age
2 years 7 months at the beginning of his study), however, did not

correct her brother during the study.
I also observed a similar correction phenomenon among the
focal children.
However, there were two noticeable differences.
First, in Norrick's
(1988) study, the initial focus of Nick's
correction was on factual errors, whereas the focus of the

children's correction in this study was predominantly on formal
language properties
(i.e., phonology, semantics, and syntax).
Second, no pragmatic correction activities were documented in

Norrick's study.
Aaron, on the other hand, was able to offer
pragmatic correction when Darien said "stupid"

58).
(examples 57 &
Darien also demonstrated his pragmatic competence by
calling his mother's behavior "silly" instead of "stupid"

(example 59).
The boys' acquisition of this pragmatic competence
probably can be attributed to their language socialization at

school, as demonstrated in Aaron and Darien's responses to my
questions about the usage of "silly" and "stupid" in examples 57
and 59.
195
However, when correcting others' mistakes, the preschooler

in Norrick's
(1988) study and those in this study exhibited no
politeness strategies nor did they hedge to signal reluctance.

This lack of "conditional knowledge"
(Paris, Oka, de Britto,
1983)(i.e., offer corrections in an acceptable manner at an

appropriate time) sometimes embarrassed or displeased their
conversational partners. Judith's and Aaron's correction of
Darien's utterances in examples
sensitive friend in public.
(51) and (52) embarrassed their
I also was somewhat offended by
Aaron's blunt reprimand of my speaking Mandarin to Guk Hun in

example
(34), given his inappropriate commanding tone to an
adult.
De Houwer (1990) also noted a lack of pragmatic
competence in a Dutch-English-speaking girl's corrections.
She
reported that the girl usually used a reprimanding tone to

correct her mother or the researcher's mistakes.
It seems that
the rate of these bilingual children's metalinguistic development

surpassed that of their pragmatic competence.
Although they
displayed sufficient pedagogical motivation and linguistic

awareness, their pragmatic knowledge had not developed at the
same level.
With regard to the correctees' responses in Norrick's
(1988)
study and my research, the less proficient children (i.e., the

younger child in Norrick's study and Darien in my study) were
both able to repeat the correct forms in their subsequent
responses.
For example, Darien was able to repeat the correct
forms such as GUN (example 47), CAN I PLAY WITH YOU (example 54)
196
and CHICAGO (example 48).
However, not every child in my study
acknowledged the correction, especially if the child considered

the correction to be inaccurate.
Aaron's refusal to comply with
Darien's correction of "Tar Baby" was one example (example 49).

The correction phenomenon among bilingual siblings
(Norrick,
1988) or peers seems to parallel that among monolingual children,

although data in this field are sparse.
Clark (1978) reported
that monolingual children around age four became more conscious

of younger siblings' errors and often attempted to correct them.
Iwamura
(1980) noted considerable correction activity between two
playmates at 2 years, 9 months and 3 years

5 months and 3 years 8 months).
(and later at 3 years
McTear (1985), however,
reported
that peer corrections were infrequent between the two girls he

investigated intermittently from 3 years 8 months and 4 years to
5 years 5 months and 5 years 9 months respectively.
The four
correction activities noted by McTear between the two girls were

related to pronunciation and grammar.
Preece (1992) described
how monolingual children acted as critics and correctors of

peers' narratives, making lexical corrections
(e.g.,
"septic"
tank for "subject" tank, ear "muffs" for ear "mufflers").

also found some discussion about politeness routines.
She
Ely and
McCabe (1993) noted a pragmatic correction among monolingual

preschoolers in a kindergarten classroom.
The previous examples demonstrated that young monolingual
children,
similar to Aaron, Darien, and Judith, also were able to
monitor and make relatively sophisticated judgments about their
197
own and other children's linguistic performance.
However, the
monolingual children in the previous studies usually did not

repeat the correct forms upon being corrected.
Sometimes it was
due to the children's inability to perceive the original error or

to articulate the correct pronunciation; other times it was due
to the differences in opinion of what constituted a repairable
error between the corrector and the recipient
(McTear, 1985) or
it was simply due to the children's focus on communication

(Lindfors, 1987) .
The bilingual children's ability to repeat the correct forms
(i.e., Norrick's and my studies) might be attributable to the
instructional effects of home.
According to Norrick (1988), the
parents of the German-English children often corrected their

children's formal mistakes.
The father, a native speaker of
American English, corrected most often for negative transfer from

one language to another, primarily aspects of German brought into
English usage.
In contrast, the mother, a former native German
speaking teacher, primarily corrected the types of errors

monolingual German children make.
It is highly probable that
their children gradually became alert to such parental correction

and as a result, were able to pick up the cue and repeat the
correct forms.
Similarly,
I noticed on various occasions that the trio's
parents corrected their children's erroneous pronunciation of

certain vocabulary:
pronounce "gun",
Darien's mother patiently taught her son to
"something", and "our" as opposed to his
198
developmental forms *gunk, *somefing, and *we'r.
Aaron's mother
gave him a pronunciation drill until he finally modified his *gu

yi (on purpose)
into "zhu yi"
(pay attention to).
Judith's
mother helped her with the pronunciation of thunder while she was
reading a storybook. Particularly attentive to the newly acquired
language in their environment and explicitly trained to notice
the differences between their developmental forms and adult
forms, it is not surprising that the focal children were able to
incorporate the correct forms in their responses upon being
instructed.
Attributes Similar to Adult Code-Switching
I documented more conversational code-switching than
situational code-switching in the children's language behavior.
Of the 383 code-switched utterances, only 31% could be classified
as situational code-switching.
Most of the focal children's
code-switched utterances served principally conversational

functions
(69%), similar to bilingual adults' code-switching.
Genishi
(1981) reported that her children's code-switching
was generally more dependent on situational factors such as

participants and topics.
Although they did code-switch for
addressee specification and quotation, the frequencies were much

lower.
Genishi's explanation for why she failed to find more
conversational code-switching among her children was that the

features of the site "worked against conversational switching"
(Genishi, 1981, p. 149).
She speculated that more instances of
conversational switching might have been found among the children
199
had she examined the children's code-switching behavior in the

children's home settings.
The fact that I examined my children's
code-switching behavior across three different settings--school,

home, and play group--probably gave me the opportunity to
document more conversational code-switching than Genishi.
Stavans
(1992) argued that bilingual children's code
switching primarily "serve purposes of immediate needs and

attention rather than social identity and status"
(p. 48) .
However, I found that the children in this study were able to

code-switch to display their ethnic awareness
(examples 85, 86,
and 89) and to mark authoritative status (examples 87 and 88),

although very occasionally.
I do not intend to argue that these
bilingual children can code-switch with the same level of

sophistication as their adult counterparts.
Instead,
I wish to
point out that we should examine the children's code-switching

across a variety of settings before making any claims about
bilingual children's and adults' code-switching.
Language Direction of the Children's Code-Switching
The focal children generally switched between the two
languages when exchanging ordinary information (i.e., unmarked
code-switching), specifying a particular audience, making
corrections, demonstrating their explicit language awareness,
reiterating and explaining their messages, and engaging in word
play.
The children's intentional code-switching was always from
English to Mandarin.
Their intentional code-switching
demonstrated that they knew the communication norm but
200
intentionally violated it.
For example, Aaron switched from
English to Mandarin to encode his authoritative relationship with

Darien (examples 87 and 88).
It is likely that Aaron sensed the
authority inherent in Darien's mother who used her son's Chinese

name and learned to address Darien in the same way to encode his
authority.
This interpretation was confirmed by an informal chat
mentioned in chapter 4.
In addition, the children's intentional
code-switching from English to Mandarin displayed their ethnic

awareness.
For instance, Darien and Judith switched from English
to Mandarin to tease their classmates
(examples 85 and 86), and
Aaron and Darien switched from English to Mandarin to exclude

their monolingual student teacher (example 89).
They knew how to
exploit their bilingual competence to achieve internal purposes.

In contrast, the children's code-switching for discourse
routines
(i.e., interjection, negation, and apology), playacting,
and quotation only occurred from Mandarin to English.
I did not
observe Judith code-switch for apology or quotation in either

direction (see Table 9).
But I did observe her quote a Chinese
cartoon character in Mandarin at home.
The fact that the
children switched from Mandarin to English for discourse routines

seemed to suggest two things.
First, their appropriate use of
code-switching for interjections, negation, apology, and

quotation demonstrated some basic linguistic and communicative
competence.
Second, their code-switching to English for
discourse routines indicated that they have become accustomed to

using English to express their immediate emotional responses,
201
even when they knew the corresponding Mandarin equivalents.

Although Darien always used English interjections, he code
switched from English to Mandarin to express his feelings when he
was emotionally involved.
The use of formulaic language (i.e.,
interjections) was an indication of his developmental progress in

his English, whereas the use of Mandarin to express his surging
feelings was a demonstration that he was still a Mandarindominant bilingual.
Language Socialization
In discussing young bilingual children's "language mixing"
(i.e., intrasentential code-switching), Genesee
(1989) commented
that "an alternative general explanation of mixing that has not

been examined seriously is that bilingual children's mixed
utterances are modeled on mixed input produced by others."
169) .
(p.
Several sociolinguistic researchers interested in
bilingual children's code-switching have examined the influence

of "others1" language input, especially that of parents, on the
children's language behavior (Kwan-Terry, 1992; Lanza, 1992).
Kwan-Terry's (1992) research on an English-Cantonese speaking
preschooler and his mother and Lanza's
(1992) research with a 2-
year-old Norwegian-English speaking child and her mother appeared

to corroborate Genesee's claim that bilingual children's code
switching probably is a result of adult language modeling.
further examine the validity of this claim,
To
I first discuss my
findings on the influence of maternal input and maternal

attitudes on the children's code-switching.
Then I examine the
202
relationship between my own language use and the children's code

switching and the effects of other potential socializing factors.
The Influence of Maternal Language Use and Attitudes
Despite the mothers' claims that they spoke Mandarin to
their children at home, my observations revealed that they all
code-switched while addressing their children.
Judith's mother
code-switched intrasententially more often (53%) than Aaron's

mother (33%), who in turn did so more frequently than Darien's
(9%) .
If maternal language patterns were the only factor
influencing their children's, we would expect Darien to codeswitch intra-sententially least frequently, and Judith most
frequently.
However, this was not the case.
In fact, Darien
code-switched English into Mandarin most frequently (71%), Aaron

did so less frequently (52%), and Judith least frequently (36%).
The differences in the mother-child speech patterns are
intriguing.
Aaron's mother used Mandarin more frequently (44%)
than intrasentential code-switching (33%) while interacting with

her son, but Aaron used intrasentential code-switching (52%) more
frequently than Mandarin (16%) during interactions with his
mother.
Darien's mother usually spoke Mandarin (76%) to her son,
but Darien used intrasentential code-switching to interact with

his mother most of the time (71%).
Judith's mother code-switched
English intrasententially into Mandarin (53%) more frequently

than she used Mandarin (40%) or intersentential code-switching
(6%) to address her daughter, but Judith used intersentential
code-switching more frequently (52%) than intrasentential code
203
switching (36%) or Mandarin (6%) to respond to her mother.
These
results suggest that the children's language patterns did not

necessarily reflect their mothers' language patterns, although I
noted that one of Aaron's intrasentential code-switches seemed to
replicate his mother's
(i.e., rewind in example 24) .
On the
other hand, there was evidence (i.e., interview data) to suggest

that Judith's mother sometimes modeled her intrasentential code
switching (example 31) on Judith's.
This finding points to the
problem of directionality in considering home language

socialization patterns in bilingual families. It appears that
language modeling does not operate in a unidirectional way but
probably in a bi-directional manner.
It is probable that both
children and mothers are modeling certain aspects of codeswitching behavior for each other. In other words, reciprocal
roles were played by the children and their mothers in the
socialization process at home.
However, to know more about the directionality and influence
of maternal language input, it is important to examine the
mothers' language behavior and bilingual experiences across a
variety of settings as well as their language learning history.
The mothers' bilingual proficiency and bilingual experiences were
different from their children's because all of them learned
English as a foreign language in their home countries.
Darien's mother spoke English more fluently than Darien.
mother spoke English almost as fluently as Aaron.
In fact,
Aaron's
Although
Judith's mother did not speak English as fluently as Judith, her
204
knowledge about English vocabulary and grammar surpassed that of

her daughter.
Thus, it is likely that the mothers' code
switching behavior was more related to sociocultural factors than

to their second language proficiency.
In other words, the
mothers' code-switching patterns probably were based on their

conceptions about bilingualism, their attitudes toward the
dominant language and culture, as well as their opportunities and
experiences in using the two languages.
Maternal attitudes seemed to exert some influence on the
Aaron's mother provided an accepting
environment in which Aaron could use code-switching to

communicate with her (examples 21-23).
Although Darien's mother
insisted that Darien repeat in Mandarin what he said with

intrasentential code-switching,
she did not prohibit Darien from
switching languages, provided that he knew the Mandarin

equivalents for most of the English he code-switched.
Her lack
of overt objection to Darien's intrasentential code-switching can

be viewed as her tacit permission to do so.
Judith's mother's
positive attitude towards her daughter's language choice might

have contributed to Judith's frequent use of intersentential
code-switching.
Therefore, the bilingual language acquisition
and use of code-switching of young bilingual children probably is

more complex than what can be fully explained by a language input
theory.
205
Other Potential Socializing Factors

Sibling and peer language appeared to exert some influence
on the children's code-switching.
Judith's older sister, Margie,
It should be recalled that
sometimes addressed Judith in
English, especially during playacting.
Margie's use of English
with Judith might have modeled frequent intersentential code

switching at home.
When I asked Darien why he code-switched
English into Mandarin frequently, he told me that he was

imitating Aaron ("Wo xue AARON de") .
Thus, peer language
appeared to have contributed to Darien's code-switching.

The use of media language also appeared to contribute to the
children's code-switching. Aaron's mother told me that Aaron was
a cartoon fan and usually watched cartoons 2 to 3 hours a day.
As a result, Aaron learned some of the code-switched terms
cartoon figures) from viewing television.
(i.e.,
My observations also
revealed that Darien learned some of the code-switched terms from

watching television at home
(example 24).
switching about the Pocahontas video
Judith's code
(example 43) might also have
been due to her exposure to media language.

My language use might have resulted in the children's use of
code-switching for referential
(16%) and explication (18%)
functions because I asked them to explain their knowledge of

specific English items in Mandarin. I also provided an accepting
environment in which the children could use code-switching
without any reservations, which might constitute another
socializing factor. However,
I used very little code-switching.
206
So, it is unlikely that the children were modeling most of their

code-switching patterns based on my language behavior.
Other factors such as the children's school experience
(example 26), their motivations to speak English, and their
acceptance of English as the dominant language, probably played a
role in their language socialization.
The influence of paternal
language input was not a focus of this study.
According to
Judith's mother, Judith's father responded to Judith in whatever

language she used, which might again model more use of
intersentential code-switching at home.
Although I did not
record any language input generated by Aaron's and Darien's

fathers, it is probable that their language patterns also exerted
some influence on their children's.
Finally, the bilingual children's potential to creatively
use code-switching should not be overlooked in the examination of
language socialization issues.
We know that monolingual children
create and produce language that they have never heard before
(Lindfors, 1987).
Darien's code-switched utterances "Wo REALLY
AM DARIEN" in example (24) and "DO YOU WANT TO 'bendan'" in

example (58) were evidence of his own creative construction.
Darien created code-switched utterances that Mandarin-English
speaking adults would not produce.
This creative construction
suggests that Darien, like his monolingual counterparts, was

actively participating in creating his own speech patterns.
So,
a language socialization theory related to bilingual children's

code-switching needs to take into account children's potential
207
for creative construction.

Physical Settings and the Children's Language Choice
One of the methodological improvements of the current study
was that I examined the focal children's language use across
three different settings: school, home, and play group. My
purpose was to discover if different physical settings exerted an
influence on the children's language choice.
Table 11 revealed
that, except for interjection and quotation, the variations in

frequency distributions among the functions appeared to be more
related to the influence of participants than settings.
finding corroborates previous reports
1981; McClure,
This
(Fantini; 1985; Genishi,
1977, 1981, Stavans, 1992, among others) that
physical settings are not the primary determinant of bilingual

children's language choice.
However,
it contradicts research
findings on bilingual adults' code-switching (Gumperz, 1982;

Myers-Scotton,
1983, 1993), which indicated that setting played a
major role in adult's code-switching.
Although Mandarin (or
Mandarin utterances with English vocabulary insertions) was used

with greater frequency at the focal children's homes and my
apartment
(e.g., examples 21-25), English was also heard there--
especially when the children were involved in playacting

(examples 74-77) and metalinguistic discussion (examples 60-62).
Similarly, even though English was the only language of
communication between the focal children and non-Mandarin
speaking children (examples 3 9-41) and monolingual teachers
(examples 8-13) at school, interactions among the focal children
208
in the classrooms and on the playground were often in Mandarin or

in Mandarin sentences with English vocabulary insertions
(examples 1, 2, 5, & 37).
Two possible explanations for why physical settings did not
exert a major influence on the children's code-switching were the
teachers' acceptance of the children's use of their native
language at school and the parents' use and acceptance of codeswitching at home.
The children seemed to associate English more
with participants than with the physical setting at school

because they heard so many different languages (Korean, Japanese,
Mandarin, English, etc.) spoken by children and adults in the
classroom.
The only time that they spoke English was when they
wanted to address the monolingual teachers and other nonMandarin-speaking children.
As a result, the children did not
seem to take physical settings into much account when choosing

which language to use.
Another possible reason might be the
fairly constant presence of the three children across the

different settings, and their constant interaction with each
other regardless of setting.
It is likely that this situation
resulted in a similar social milieu across the three physical

settings, lessening the potential effect of different
surroundings on the children's language behavior.
Although the children's code-switching behavior did not vary
substantially across the three settings,
I would have lost
important information on their code-switching if I had not

observed them across the settings.
First, I would not have been
209
able to document the various ways in which the children used

code-switching because some of their code-switching only occurred
in certain setting(s).
For example, the children only code-
switched for teasing and excluding an ethnically different

audience at school.
They only code-switched for quotation at
home and during the play group, and code-switched to encode

authority at school and during the play group.
In addition,
would not have been able to understand the influence of different

socializing forces on the children's code-switching.
example,
For
I would not have known about the mothers' accepting
attitudes toward their children's code-switching at home.
Nor
would I have understood the influence of school language or the

influence of peer language.
Thus, my view of the children's
language socialization process would have been severely limited.

The Relationship Between Second Language Proficiency
and Code-Switching
To my knowledge, Wentz and McClure (1975) conducted one of
the few studies that has examined the relationship between
bilingual children's code-switching and their language
proficiency.
They reported that Spanish-English bilingual
children who were not equally proficient in Spanish and English

tended to switch more often at the word level, while those
children with equal proficiency in the two languages tended to
switch at higher constituent within the sentence (i.e., phrases
and clauses).
210
The children in my study predominantly code-switched at the

single word level
Judith).
(54% for Aaron, 73% for Darien, and 45% for
The fact that Aaron and Judith switched more frequently
at the single word level than intersententially (21% for Aaron,

and 41% for Judith) might be due to their younger age than those
fluent bilingual children in Wentz and McClure's
the time of study.
(1975) study at
In addition, Aaron and Judith were still
dominant Mandarin speakers, whereas those children in Wentz and

McClure's study were more balanced bilinguals.
The results of the present study suggest that, similar to
Wentz and McClure's
(1975) findings, the children's ability to
code switch intrasententially and intersententially correlated

with their English proficiency.
For example,
I found a
developmental trend in Darien's intrasentential code-switching.

As he progressed in his English, Darien switched from inserting
single English words to formulaic phrases in his Mandarin.
Aaron
and Judith, the more proficient English speakers, were able to

code-switch intersententially much more frequently (21% for Aaron
and 42% for Judith)
speaker.
than Darien (7%), the less proficient English
These findings suggest that there may be a
developmental relationship between young bilingual children's

code-switching and their second language proficiency.
Limitations of the Study
Although the role of an active participant observer enabled
me to understand the children's speech patterns in their most
natural habitat,
it appeared to affect the amount of
211
interactional data I collected during my weekly observation at

each child's home.
The children were accustomed to my weekly
home visits to audiotape their oral language production and

approached their parents with questions and requests as usual.
However, their parents seemed less inclined to be involved
actively in their children's activities.
They often faded into
the background to wash dishes, do house chores, read newspapers

or take care of a younger child,
interact with one another.
leaving the focal children to
As a consequence, the amount of
child-parent interactional data in the home setting was much less

than the child-child interactional data, as was reflected in the
examples cited in chapter 4.
This could have influenced the
maternal input data or the physical setting data I collected.

In addition, the method of letting the children watch video
playback at my apartment was not as effective as I had expected
it to be.
During the first 4 weeks,
I showed them important
clips of the videotapes and tried to elicit their responses.

However, the children giggled most of the time and did not answer
my questions.
Later I used another method.
I asked the children
to clarify or elaborate on their previous remarks whenever I felt

it to be necessary.
This method helped me to document some of
the underlying reasons for the children's utterances.
For
example, I understood why Aaron considered Darien's DO YOU WANT

TO "ben dan" inappropriate in example
(58); why Darien did not
consider Pocahontas to be "people" in example (53) ; why he

considered "move" as a synonym for "separate" in example
(63);
212
and which word pair Judith considered to be rhyming in example

(6 1 ) .
The third limitation was the fact that the three children
were together more than I expected across the three settings,
possibly minimizing the potential effect of setting on the
children's code-switching behavior.
Although the children
sometimes interacted with other children and teachers at school

and with other non-Mandarin-speaking children at home, they
usually played with one another.
Had the interacting
participants been more diverse, the setting effect might have

been more visible.
The last limitation was that I did not have data for other
family members at each child's home. Had I chosen to observe the
children at home at night, I probably would have gained much more
data for paternal and sibling language patterns at each child's
home.
Implications
Research Implications
As is often the case, this study raised more questions than
it answered.
An interesting finding was the bilingual children's
instruction and correction of each other's English, their second

language.
Further research is needed to investigate if such peer
scaffolding also exists among other young bilingual children.

need to understand if this phenomenon is only limited to highly
motivated children who are concerned about the correct use of
forms.
In other words, more research needs to investigate if
We
213
such a correction phenomenon is a product of bilingualism or a

mere demonstration of individual differences.
Second, this study discovered a trend between the children's
English proficiency and the types of code-switching they
produced.
Aaron and Judith, with higher levels of English
proficiency, were able to use intersentential code-switching more

frequently than Darien, whose English proficiency was lower.
The
study also found a developmental trend in Darien's

intrasentential code-switching:
formulaic phrases.
From single English words to
Additional research needs to investigate the
developmental trend that I found between bilingual children's

second language proficiency and their code-switching.
Third, due to the fact that I examined the children's code
switching across a variety of settings, I was able to document
more conversational code-switching among the children.
This
finding was in contrast to previous research (Genishi, 1981) that

documented more situational code-switching among Mexican-American
children.
More research is needed to examine young bilingual
children's language behavior across a variety of settings in

order to gain insight into the sophistication of their code
switching behavior.
Further research also is needed to focus on
the similarities between adult and children's code-switching and

to further develop a theory of code-switching that bridges the
gap between studies of bilingual children and adults' code
switching.
214
Finally, this study only addressed maternal language input

at home and failed to examine maternal second language learning
experiences and history.
Future research is needed to
investigate these aspects in order to better understand the

influence of maternal input on their children's behavior.
More
research also is needed to examine the influences of paternal and

sibling language on the children's code-switching in order to get
a more complete picture of language socialization at home.
Educational Implications
The use of the native language frequently is not allowed in
all-English settings because many monolingual teachers construe
students' utilization of their native language as an impediment
to their acquisition of English, especially when the conversation
disrupts ongoing instructional activities.
However, my
observations show that the focal children's use of their native

language among themselves did not always revolve around
unimportant matters such as joking or arguing but also around
instructional ends.
Similar to the Cantonese-English-speaking
children in Guthrie and Guthrie's study (1987) and the MandarinEnglish-speaking children in Tsai and
Garcia's study (1996), who
used their primary language for instructional ends, the children

in my study often switched to their native language to instruct
each other, to explain the rules of games, or to remedy a
communication breakdown between the less proficient pupil and the
monolingual teacher.
Their use of their native language was
instrumental in avoiding mutual frustration between the
215
monolingual instructor and the less proficient child.
It also
helped the less proficient child function normally in a second

language environment.
There is general agreement that affective factors (motives,
needs, attitudes, and emotional states) play a critical role in
young children's second-language acquisition (McLaughlin, 1984,
1985). Students' use of their native language in a second
language classroom can reduce their feelings of insecurity and
anxiety, that is, lower their affective filters
(Krashen, 1985).
From my observations, the teacher's respectful acceptance of the

children's use of their native language did not appear to impede
their English development.
Recently, educators exploring code-switching in classrooms
have found that it can facilitate instruction, create mutual
understanding, and establish rapport (Guthrie & Guthrie, 1987;
Huerta-Macias & Quintero,
1992; Tukinoff, 1985) .
Huerta-Macias
and Quintero (1992) also found that it built self-esteem on the

part of students who knew that they could participate in class
and let their voices be heard in whatever language (s) they could
express themselves.
The children's use of code-switching suggests ways in which
bilingual teachers might be able to use code-switching to enhance
their bilingual students learning.
They could use it to check
students' understanding, make clarifications, procedural and

directional remarks, or even occasionally translate difficult
concepts.
Monolingual teachers, who do not know their students'
216
native languages, need to be more hesitant before they silence

their bilingual students' use of their first language.
According
to some educational researchers, such side conversations, either

in English or students' native language, often contribute to
classroom learning (Lemke, 1989; Saville-Troike, 1984, Tsai &
Garcia, 1996).
Aaron's Mandarin explication in examples
(2), and Judith's explication of "SORE HAND" in example

evidence of such side conversations.
(1) and
(69) were
Had the teachers shushed
Aaron and Judith in those instances, Darien would have had

difficulty in comprehending the teachers and thus would have not
been able to function effectively.
Furthermore, it is highly
probable that such a shushing might terminate the possibility of

valuable peer scaffolding among the children.
Before taking any
prohibitory action, monolingual teachers need to observe closely

bilingual children's nonverbal communication to decide what is
being exchanged in their native language.
Questions such as "Are
you discussing the topic that I am talking about" will also help
determine the relevance of the children's talk to current
instructional activities.
Perhaps the most important thing hinges on a change of
attitude:
a positive attitude toward bilingual children's use of
code-switching in classrooms.
Without teachers' attitudinal
change and positive support, students will feel reluctant or even

ashamed to use their native languages for discussion in the
classroom, which, in turn, lessens the chance of valuable peer
scaffolding.
However, such an attitudinal change among
217
monolingual and bilingual teachers can not be expected without

researchers' providing them with convincing evidence.
More
research needs to be conducted to document the facilitating

effects of code-switching on second language acquisition and
academic learning in bilingual classrooms.
Only when practi
tioners have been informed about the valuable effects of

bilingual children's code-switching on their academic learning
can they develop more positive attitudes toward and subsequent
acceptance of such behavior in the classrooms.
And only by
appreciating bilingual children's code-switching as a

sociolinguistic strength can monolingual and bilingual teachers
really become facilitators in their students' second language
learning process.
218
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Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.
STUDENT O B SE R VA T I ON INSTRUMENT FO R RATING O R A L PROFICIENCY (SOIROP)1
Juno 17,1003
I/i/j hslmmont ivus designed to be usod as pad o f a comprohonslvo system lor assessing the language prolldoncy of English language learners. The SO IR O P
assesses oml proficiency only,'and other assossmonismusl bo usod to doioijnlne a student's level of prolldoncy In the other language modalities (writing, roaring and
'llslonlng). Also, It Is rocognlzod that students looming English often maintain tliolr acconl; the presence of an accent must not Inlluonco an assessment ol language
proficiency. PLACEMENT AND PROGRAMMING DECISIONS MUST NOT DE BASED ON THE STUDENTS SOIROP RESULTS ALONE.
Directions; For each o( the 6 categories below at loll, mark on 'X' across the box that bost describes Iho eludonl'a ablllllos. liao block Ink lo r the
/all administration of Hi* SOIROP, and rod Ink to Indicate Iho sludanl'a ablllllea ol (he spring administration. Use the back to report the results.
LEVEL 0
LEVEL 1
LEVEL 2
LEVEL 3
LEVEL 4
LEVEL 6
Comprehension
No proldaocy.
Recognltai tlntpl*
quatScnt and command*;
ratponda to more oomfiai
UWanoai wtSi 1 don'l
know*. Inappropriate or'
haudU* ratfxxuat.
Comprehtndt Intoipartonal
convention wttn tpoh*n
tlovriy and vASt liaqoanl
rapalhloni; ratpona* oTUn
lndud*>
rapatldon ik i iconn*cUd
utlarencai.
Undautandi / It capable ot
leipondng to m oil
lnl*ip*itonal/d*itiD om
dacuiilona wltMi fraqoanl
derilcattont *i given.
Undaiilanda naity *1
fctlarpartonaj / dattioom
d tout tlont ,t alStough
oocailonal rapaSlont mty
b rtacataaiy
Undaiilanda inlaiparaonal
cofrvartaSon and
dattioom d tout t torn
wTtfioul dUlctily.
P roductionFluency
No proSdancy.
SpMdt U Irrila d to an
atdtang* ol b a d v*rtt*l
lomwUt (e.g., commocfy
ui*d tMttonc** and
fh ra m ) or *Vt(/* word
utlaiancai.
U u i U ntil* ( lanlencat
w<St laatoneblt * ; long
pautat * i* common and .
ga tluiat w * ollan u i* d to
b u b a l* meaning.
Bag/nt to cmt* mot* novel

tanltncai; tpaadt In
tolaipartona) 1 da ttioom
d tc u itlo n i It IraquanSy
InlamtpUd by a tttr c h lor
St* cotitcl rntnntr ol
tp rtiilo n .
Bpeedt In Intarpartona) and

dattioom dtcu a ilo n t 1* ,
ganaraly In *id , whh V
occatlontl la p ta t wMIe lh*
ahrdanl tM ic lta t lot Si*
coiiad manner o{
aiprattJon,
Spaach In InUipaitonal
oonvaitaSon and In
dattioom daouiilont la
Suanl and aboitau,
appraidnalary Stal ol a
nalv* Engl tit tpatltaf o(
Ita tarna aga,
I l t i Im lu d command ot
liolelad vocabulary lor
oomnton otyadt *rtd
adMSatbul
oompraltaniiblky l i ohan
dttaSL
IU i command ol wordi lor

oommon o b |*d i / activlilai
bul dtolc* o| woidi I t o lu ii
Inappiopriale loi St*
alkjalon / conlart;
comprebtntlbUty r*mlnt
d llo it
Hat adequate vocabUary to

ptim ll tomawhal IlmHad
d tcu itlon ol InUrptrtontJ
wtd datiroom ktptot.
Flow ol tpaach I t rarely Inlariuplad by Inadaqutla

Vocabdary; It capabta ol
itpbiatlng to ta l and
Stout/da to a tp ra tt
meaning.
Uta ol vocabiitry and - I

Idtomt tppmilmaUi Stal ol I
a nallva Englth apaakai ol (
St* tama *g*.
U tu tly Inlallglbla, Siotjgt)

aomi la m d t are t i l l
tolkitnctd by St* primary
Itnguagt; Inappropriate
Intonaton p tllw n t w *
liequanl.
Ahvayt InlallgfcU w<(\

occatlonal InappioprtaU
StlonaSon paivamt; tlg h l
btSuanca ol primary
Itnguagt may aSS b*
obtalvad.
PmnunciaSon and
htonaSon ipprodmalat
Itat ol a naSva Englah
tpaakar ol St* tarn* aga.
May maka gramntaAcal

airoit howaval, Stay do Itol
obtcura mawtlng.
QrammaUcal uiag*
approtlmalat l t d ol a
naSva Englth ipaahai ot
Ita tama aga.
Production Vocabulary
Ho protdancy.
| Production -
No proSdancy.
Strongly Inluaaead by
primary language, Indodng
lnton*loo *rtd word * lr*n .
Muil raptal to b
undantood.
Freqoanty Inluancad by
primary language and m u il
r*p*l uSarartcat to b*
nnderalood.
Ho proldancy.
Qitmmw and word oidtr

i Im lltd to mamoriitd
loitni.
Dado grtm m tr pariami are U ttt ntoit complar

otlan utd conacSy lor
Ungutg* tbuckrrei, bul l i
ilmpl*. Itrallar p tim i* i and occailonaly Inaccurate.
Mnlancai.
1 Pronunciation
Production
G ra m m a r
'H i* SOIROP It It* i . t i f l ol cdUbaitlW* tltort b itw M n lh* Evaluation A tilila nc* C *nl*r (EAC) E*l | Th* O io ig i WaiNitglon Unlvanlly and St* M a tia d iu ia iu
A tta iu n a n l Adrltoiy Qioup (IM 2 3). Tit* Intlium tnl It batad on Si* Slmlanl ond I annuait* Olitaivatnn Malrlr (SO I n u t
i. h, >- V \. (rat ii.u a . ,r ,t.--u n . .i.i
1
I
]
1
1
(
|
s13
P3
>
to
U>
U)
234
APPENDIX B
A SCALE FOR RATING CCHILDREN'S NATIVE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY
ORAL LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT .

HOME. LANGUAGE
Ch i1d 's N a m e ________________________________________________

Langu ag e of A s s e s s m e n t _________________________________ J_
Date of A s s e s s m e n t
Person C o n d u c t i n g
_______________________
Child's Age
A s s es sm e nt ____________________________
Please us e the a t t a c he d "Language P r o f i c i e n c y D e s c r i p t i o n s " as a g u i d e

>-te the c h i l d in each of the areas below.
Accent
Grammar
V o e a b u 1a r y
Fluency
Comprehension
Comments:
to
235
LA N G U A G E PROFICIENCY DESCRIPTIONS
Accent
1. P ronunciation frequently unintelligible.
2. Frequent gross errors and a very heavy accent making understanding d iffic u lt, requiring frequent repetition.
3. "F o re ig n accent that requires concentrated listening; m ispronunciation leading to occasional misunderstanding
and apparent errors in gram m ar o r vocabulary.
4. Marked ' fo re ig n " accent and occasional Inisproniinciaiions which do not interfere w ith understanding.
5. No conspicuous m ispronunciations fur a child u f that age level but w o u ld not be taken fu r a native speaker.
6. N ative p ronunciation, w ith no trace o f "fo re ig n accent.
Grammar
1. G ram m ar almost e ntirely inaccurate esccpt in common phrases.
2. Constant errors showing control o f very few major patterns, relative to a native speaker o f that age level, and fre
quently preventing com m unication.
3. Frequent errors showing lack o f control o f some m ajor patterns and causing more misunderstanding than would be
expected fo r a native speaker o f that age level.
4. Occasional errors showing imperfect control o f some patterns hut no weakness that causes-iuisuudcrslandiug.
5. Few errors, w ith no patterns o f failure, but still lacking fu ll control over gram m ar lhat-is expected o f that age.
6. No more than tw o errors during the interview, other than those typical o f a child o f the same age who Ls a native
speaker o f that language.
Vocabulary
1. Vocabulary inadequate fo r even the simplest conversation.
2. Vocabulary lim ited to basic personal and survival areas (tim e, food, fa m ily , etc.)
3. Choice o f words sometimes more inaccurate than would be expected o f a native speaker o f the same age,'and
lim ita tio n s o f vocabulary that prevent continuous conversation.
4. Vocabulary adequate to carry on basic conversation but some circum locutions are present.
3. Vocabulary almost as broad and precise as would be expected o f a native speaker o f the same age.
6. Vocabulary apparently as accurate and extensive as that o f a native speaker o f the same age.
Fluency
1.
2.
3.
4.
Speech so halting and fragmentary that conversation Is virtu a lly impossible.

Speech very slow and uneven except for short or routine sentences.
Speech more hesitant and jerky than a native speaker o f the same age; sentences left uncompleted.
Speech occasionally hesitant, with some unevenness caused by rephrasing and groping fo r words, more so than
w ould be typical fo r that age level.
3. Speech effortless and sm ooth, but perceptibly non-native in speed and evenness.
6. Speech on all topics that are o f interest to that age level as effortless and smooth as a native speaker's.
Comprehension
1. Understands lo o little fo r the simplest type o f conversations.
2. Understands o n ly slow, very simple speech on concrete topics; requires m ore repetition and rephrasing than would
be expected o f a native speaker o f (he same age.
3. Understands ca re fu l, somewhat simplified speech directed to him , w ith considerable repetition and rephrasing.
4. Understands adult speech quite well directed to him , bul still requires.more repetition o r rephrasing than a native
speaker o f the same age.
3. Understands everything in conversation except fo r colloquial o r low -frequency items, or exceptionally rapid or
slurred speech.
6. Understands everything in both formal and colloquial speech expected o f a native speaker o f (he same age.
236
APPENDIX C
CODING OF THE GENERAL FUNCTIONS OF THE CHILDREN'S CODE-SWITCHING
Function
Terms Used by
Example
Addressee
specification
Gumperz
D:
[To Aaron] GUK HUN lai l e !

(GUK HUN is coming!)
[To Guk Hun] GET AWAY!
[To Aaron] GUK HUN shi
mogui.
(GUK HUN is a monster.)
Referential
Appel & Muysken

(1987)
D:
Ni zhidao wo HALLOWEEN
yao biancheng shenme ma?
(Do you know who I will
turn into on HALLOWEEN?)
BLUE RANGER a!
D u i . (Yes.)
(1982)
A:
D:
Unmarked
Fantini
code-switching
(1985)
A:
D:
Playacting
Orellana (1994)
J:
A:
J:
A:
D:
Correction
De Houwer (1990)
J:
D:
Zhe shi shei de shu?

Wo ke yi kan ma?
(Whose book is this?
Can I read it?)
Na shi wo de BOOK.
Ni ke yi READ.
(That's my BOOK.
You can READ it.)
[To the bunny]
WHAT DID
YOU SAY TO YOUR MOTHER?
Ta shuo (she said), "CAN I
GO TO HIS HOUSE?"
YES, YOU CAN!
Wo shuo (I said), "YA,
THIS IS OUR HOUSE."
NO, THIS IS OUR HOUSE.
YOUR HOUSE IS OVER THERE.
Wo buxiang wan BUNNY d e .
(I d o n 't want to play the
BUNNY game.)
ROBIN, ROBIN, ni shi
(you are) ROBIN.
Bu shi ROBIN, shi ROB N!
(It's not ROBIN, ROB N ! )
237
Function
Terms Used by
Example
Interjection
Gumperz (1982]
D:
Zhe shi shenme dongxi,

hao YUCKY o!
(What's this stuff?
It's really YUCKYI)
Reiteration
Gumperz (1982)
D:
MOMMY, wo shuibuzhao.
(MOMMY, I can't sleep.)
[Twice] MOMMY, I SAY I
CAN'T SLEEP!
(MOMMY, I said I can't
sleep.)
Negation
Stavans (1992)
D:
JUDITH wan le jiu shi wo

de TURN le.
(It's my TURN after
JUDITH'S done with it.)
NO. JUDITH wan le shi
wode TURN.
(It's my TURN after
JUDITH'S done with it.)
A:
Explication
A:
H:
A:
Explicit
language
awareness
De Houwer
(1990)
H:
A:
D:
POWER, POWER.
POWER shi shenme?
(What is POWER?)
POWER jiushi you liqi.
POWER RANGER de POWER.
(POWER means strength,
as in POWER RANGER'S
POWER.)
Gou zenme j iao?
(What does a dog's barking
sound like?)
WO O F ! WOOF!
Wang! Wang! Gou zenme
jiao WOLF a? Lang
caijiao WOLF a!
(How come a dog is called
WOLF? It's "lang" that
should be called WOLF!)
Meiguogou de jiaosheng jiu
j iao WOLF a !
(They just called American
dogs barking sound W O L F !)
238
Function
Terms Used by
Example
Word play
De Houwer
(1990)
H:
A:
D:
A:
D:
A:
D:
Apology
H:
A:
Marked
Myers-Scotton
code-switching (1993)
Quotation
Teasing
Gumperz (1982)
Gankuai chi, chiwan you

juzi.
(Eat quickly, we'll have
tangerines after lunch.)
TANGERINE!
TANGAROO! KANGAROO, ROO,
ROO, ROOI
TENDER BOX!
HOW ABOUT TENDER LUNCH?
YUCKY!
[To Hui-Tzu] AARON yongli
guanmen jia doa wode sou
le.
(AARON slammed the door
and jammed my finger.)
AARON, ni guolai.
(AARON, come here.)
SORRY.
H:
DARIEN, kuaidian chi.

Shi jian kuai dao le!
(DARIEN, eat quickly.
Time is almost u p !)
A:
[Calling Darien's Chinese

name]
Hao Hao, gankuai!
(Darien, be quick!)
A:
...PUMBA jiu shuo "

ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?"
Jieguo ta jiu ba ZAZU jiu
chulai le.
(...PUBA said, "ARE YOU
TALKING TO ME?" Then he
got ZAZU out of the c a v e .)
D:
N:
D:
[To Naz]
YOU'RE A BABY.
NO!
YES, ni shi ge xiao BABY!
(You're a little BABY.)
239
VITA
Hui-Tzu Min was bora to Ai-Di Tang and Guan-Chin Min in
Taipei, Taiwan on April 22nd, 1964.
After finishing her studies
at Kaohsiung Girls' First High School, she entered the History

Department at National Taiwan Normal University.
she transferred to the Department of English.
One year later,
She ranked third
in overall scholastic performance in the English Department upon

graduation.
During the subsequent two years, she was employed as
a middle-school English teacher at Wu-Feng Junior High School.

In 198 9, she was married and admitted to the Department of
Communication and Theater at The University of Illinois at
Chicago, where she received a Master of Art degree in December,
1991.
Immediately upon graduation, she was recruited by the
Cultural Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in

Chicago and worked there as a senior assistant for two and half
years.
She arranged a visit to Taiwan for Dr. Stanley Ikenberry,
former president of the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign during that period.
It was also during this interval
that she became a mother of two boys.
In 1993, she entered the
graduate program of Curriculum and Instruction at The University

of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign, where she completed her Ph. D
degree.
Her current research interests include second language
acquisition and development, second language literacy, and

interpretation.

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INFORMATION TO USERS

A Bell & Howell information Company

THE CODE-SWITCHING BEHAVIOR OF THREE

UMI Microform 9812709

300 North Zeeb Road

U N IV E R SIT Y OF IL L IN O IS A T URBANA-CHAM PAIGN

THE CODE-SWITCHING BEHAVIOR OF THREE MANDARIN-ENGLISH

BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL F U L F I L L M E N T OF T H E REQUIREMENTS FOR

D irector of T h esis R esearch

H ead o f D epartm ent

Committee on Final Examinationf

t Required for d o cto rs d egree but not for master's.

Data from audio- and videotaped recordings, on-site

field notes, and a reflective field journal were triangulated

Analysis of the functions revealed that the

children's code-switching reflected their bilingual communicative

Their code-switching demonstrated an awareness of

their interlocutors' linguistic backgrounds, reflected their

Two of the children's mothers

The other child's mother used

intrasentential code-switching more frequently than Mandarin, but

her child used intersentential code-switching more frequently

Other socializing factors,

as well as the children's ability to produce code-switched

The less proficient child's use

of intrasentential code-switching also showed a developmental

He progressed from inserting English words into Mandarin

to inserting English formulaic phrases.

Further research needs to explore the role of

settings in bilingual children's use of code-switching because

constant encouragement as a friend and her inspirational guidance

I would like to thank the focal children's

parents for allowing me to work with their wonderful children,

I wish to acknowledge my family.

constant solace during the production of this work.

thank my husband, Shih-Wei Chou, without whose continual

Purpose of the Study.............................

Rationale for a Qualitative Research Design.....

Code-Switching of Mandarin- and Cantonese-English

Part ic ipant s ......................................

Data Collection Procedure........................

General Functions of the Focal Children's

Characteristics of Each Individual Child's

Influence of Physical Settings...................

The Focal Children's English Proficiency and

SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, AND IMPLICATIONS............

A SCALE FOR RATING CHILDREN'S NATIVE LANGUAGE

CODING OF THE GENERAL FUNCTIONS OF THE CHILDREN'S

Code-switching is a bilingual mode

of communication that is frequently and extensively used among

(Gumperz, 1982; Zentella, 1981).

In fact, some researchers claim that code-switching is a "central

(Appel & Muysken,

According to Kamwangamalu (1985), at least 115 studies have been

(1989) posited three possible answers to this question:

1978 & 1982;

Myers-Scotton, 1983 & 1993; Poplack, 1981). Prior to 1980, only a

subsequent years, there has been an increased interest in the

Verhoeven, 1987; Fantini,

1989; Lanza, 1992;

Meisel, 1989 & 1994; Orellana, 1994; Saunders,

1992). Findings from research on children's code-switching have

1981; Stavans, 1992) and